By Susan Westemeyer
If you believe BILD magazine, Jan Ullrich will be back in the pro ranks any day now. If you believe Swiss Cycling, he won't. The confusion over his status and the status of the investigations into his connection with Operation Puerto continues to grow.
BILD magazine reports that Ullrich and his attorney expect to receive a letter from UCI president Pat McQauid "any day," saying that the documents from Spain cannot be used in any other investigation, and that therefore, there will be no proceedings against him in Switzerland.
The Austrians have already received McQuaid's letter, BILD reports, and therefore dropped their investigation of Jörg Jaksche. The Swiss will react the same way, according to BILD, which quotes Lorenz Schläfli, director of Swiss Cycling, as saying, "We don't have anything in front of us at this time. When we have the instructions from McQuaid, we will recommend to our disciplinary committee that no proceedings against Jan Ullrich be opened."
However, Schläfli told Cyclingnews Friday afternoon, "We have been told that the dossier which we have received cannot be used for a disciplinary hearing. However, there are some interventions and complaints pending dealing with the question of whether these papers may be used or not. So we are still waiting for further information from the Spanish investigators."
To add to the confusion, UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani told Cyclingnews: "In fact, the UCI wrote to the NF [national federations] in order to inform them that using the documents from Spain for disciplinary proceeding was no longer allowed."
