No Ullrich DNA comparison soon

There's no telling when German investigators will be able to make a DNA comparison between a sample from Jan Ullrich and the blood bags taken into custody during Operación Puerto, but it probably won't be any time soon. "Heaven only knows when that will happen," Jörg Spindler of the Bonn, Germany, prosecutor's office told the press agency dpa.

"We don't know the reason for the delay," he told the sid. Ullrich gave the investigators his DNA sample last week. "But without the material from Madrid that doesn't help us much, because we can't make a DNA comparison."

The German and Spanish investigators have already reached an agreement that a German official will pick up the bags of blood in Madrid and bring them to Germany.

"If there should not be any agreement and the blood turns out not to be from Ullrich, then there is practically no probability of a complaint being filed," Spindler said.

However the investigators are also looking at materials taken in searches of the homes of Ullrich's manager, Wolfgang Strohband, in Hamburg, and his mentor Rudy Pevenage in Geraardsbergen, Belgium. Ullrich's attorneys have asked a Swiss court to prohibit Swiss authorities from turning over to the Germans various documents which they took into custody during a search of Ullrich's house in September.