The day before last week’s Flèche-Wallonne, a high-powered group met in Charleroi, Belgium, to discuss how to handle the latest developments in the ongoing Operación Puerto doping inquiry. Among those in attendance were UCI ProTour manager Alain Rumpf; Christian Prudhomme, chief of Tour de France organizers Amaury Sports Organization; and Quick Step-Innergetic’s Patrick Lefevere, president of International Professional Cycling Teams (IPCT). An announcement was promised before last Sunday’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège; however, it never came. But Rumpf had a moment to chat with VeloNews in the pressroom at Liège. Here's a transcript of the discussion.

VeloNews: What can you tell us about what took place at the meeting in Charleroi, and how things might be changing moving forward?

Alain Rumpf: I think it is very important, first of all, that there was a meeting between ASO and the UCI, because it’s been a long time since we last had such a meeting. It’s no surprise because it’s about doping, and it’s a serious problem and something that we need to address in a united way. That’s the first very important signal that was given. I can’t comment on the specific contents of the discussions, because it is ongoing, but I think that everybody wants to solve a difficult situation that is very bad for cycling. A lot of information has been disclosed. A lot of riders are under suspicion. The whole sport is under suspicion, and it’s very difficult to know where to come to conclusions. There’s a real feeling that everyone wants to be finished with this. We are exploring different possibilities to do that, both on political and legal grounds. I understand that yesterday [the day before Liège-Bastogne-Lièege] the teams also had a long discussion about that, and [UCI president] Pat McQuaid has called Christian Prudhomme and Patrick Lefevre for a meeting Friday [May 4] that will take place during the Tour of Romandie. We can expect that by Friday we will have some conclusions that will be announced by the three of them.

VN: Do you expect that every rider implicated in Operación Puerto might be required to submit DNA before racing in ASO events?

AR: Not only in ASO races. we are talking about the whole sport, but that is a possibility. That’s one of the options that is being explored at the moment.

VN: Almost a year after it first hit, it sounds as though the Puerto evidence is being taken seriously.

AR: Yes, because if you want to know who those blood bags belong to, there are not many different possibilities. The best-case scenario is to know who they belong to, but how to get there is complicated. There are different ways to get there, and that’s what is being discussed.

VN: It seems as though things have changed since Jan Ullrich’s DNA was matched to the blood bags believed to be his.

AR: It showed that there is a way to know. So yes, I would say yes to that.

VN: I’m sure ProTour teams are concerned about which riders they can bring to the Tour de France. Having riders disqualified leading into the Tour is bad for everyone. How soon do you expect riders and teams to know?

AR: It should be as soon as possible. We saw what happened last year. The Puerto case went public in late May, and things could be done, but very late, and it was not satisfactory. At the end of the day, the Tour started without the Puerto riders, but it was very late and it wasn’t good. We have great expectations on the meeting that will take place Friday.

VN: What is the UCI’s take on the situation with Unibet? Some seem to feel that ASO doesn’t like this team, that its exclusion is more for political reasons than legal reasons.

AR: I think that Unibet goes way beyond cycling. The activities of the sponsor are questioned in many European countries, and there are different positions taken on this subject. It’s a political issue because it’s about the national monopolies of national lotteries against online gambling companies that operate, by nature, across borders. I don’t want to go into too many details on this question, because it really goes beyond cycling. As the UCI we have to defend the team and the sporting structure, and we signed a convention on March 5 with ASO, RCS, Unipublic [the three grand-tour organizers] and the IPCT that would introduce provisional rules for the 2007 season. Unibet is mentioned in this convention, and it says that ASO, RCS and Unipublic would look at giving wild cards to this team with a positive experience, but under the condition that there is no legal risk. This notion of legal risk is interpreted in different ways. Because there were different ways of interpreting this, we went to the court in Brussels to make a decision on that. We went and said, “We do not have the same interpretation as ASO has of this clause of the convention, can you please tell us what you think?” As far as Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Flèche-Wallonne were concerned, as far as Belgium was concerned at that time, the court said it felt that ASO respected the convention by not inviting Unibet to Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Flèche-Wallonne. Fair enough, that’s what we accepted. We will see the future in other countries. It’s a moving situation. It’s really a big political fight in Europe, between European law, that says the market must be open, you cannot have monopolies, and national laws that have those monopolies. We will see how this evolves.

VN: But the latest development was that a court in Liège ruled in Unibet’s favor, awarding the team 5 million euros from ASO for keeping them out of Flèche-Wallonne, and another 5 million euros if they kept them out of Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

AR: Unibet asked another court in Belgium to look at the case from another point of view. I don’t really know, because I’m not familiar with the whole case, but they did not ask the same question to this other court in Liège. They got an answer that they should participate. They went to Flèche-Wallonne with that court order, and as far as I understand ASO said, “Well, we’ll not let you start, because we’ll respect the decision of the court in Brussels.” As you see, it’s a very complex situation between ASO and Unibet fighting to know which court case has the priority.

VN: What is the UCI’s stance on what is happening with the Landis case? USADA’s re-testing of his already-tested urine samples is somewhat unconventional. Some have argued it’s not legal for them to re-test his samples.

AR: I won’t comment on that for two reasons. The first is because I’m not personally familiar with the whole situation. What I know I’ve read on velonews.com. And also, the more official reason, is that because the procedure is ongoing and the UCI will not comment on what’s going on. We’ll just wait for the decision.