Schäfli, who told reporters after the world championships in Salzburg that "the case against Ullrich is closed," because the UCI didn't provide the Swiss cycling federation with aditional documents and verification that the documents the Swiss federation already had were authentic. Schäfli added that Ullrich would become a license for the 2007 season if he would find a team. In an announcement on Swiss cycling website yesterday it's written that Swiss cycling received the documents with the requested stamps and signatures just before the start of the world championships. The confusing statement was published a few hours after the doping case against Ivan Basso was dropped.

 

Even more confusing is that the announcement also stated that the anti-doping authorities of Swiss Olympic are waiting for aditional documents from German and Spanish authorities before they will hand it over to the disciplinary committee of Swiss Olympic in order to actually open a case against Jan Ullrich.  It's well known that the Spanish court who is handling the Puerto affair wrote a letter to the UCI and the Spanish cycling federation in which the court ruled that the documents can't be used to open disciplinary cases against allegedly involved riders as the court is not certain about the identification of the riders. The court also ruled that the documents are confidential and can therefore not be used by national federations in cases against it's riders untill the trial against the main suspects Dr. Fuentes and his accomplices is over, which is expected to be the case by the summer of  2007. Furthermore the court announced they would not hand over more documents since the UCI is not a party in the Fuentes investigation.

 

Italian media speculated earlier this month that the UCI was putting huge pressure on the Italian anti-doping authorities not to drop charges against Italian rider Ivan Basso. 

 

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