2023-11-22 18:09:00
Former German cycling star Jan Ullrich has explicitly admitted for the first time that he took doping substances during his career. The 1997 Tour de France champion made the confession following years of silence on Wednesday at the presentation of the Amazon documentary “Jan Ullrich – The Hunted” in Munich. “I did dope, that was already clear in the documentary,” said the 49-year-old and added: “I was guilty, I feel guilty too.”
Until the end, Ullrich had always rejected a clear commitment. “I haven’t cheated on anyone,” was his standard response to questions regarding his past. In the documentary, the fallen ex-professional cyclist, who also experienced some turbulence in his private life, wants to clear things up. “I can say, from the purest heart, that I really didn’t want to cheat anyone. I didn’t want to gain an advantage. That was a different time back then. Back then, cycling already had a system that I got into. For me, that was back then a kind of equal opportunity,” explained Ullrich in a panel discussion.
Many companions came to the presentation in Munich on Wednesday, including his ex-team boss Olaf Ludwig, his sporting director Rudy Pevenage, ex-colleagues such as Ivan Basso, Jens Heppner and Danilo Hondo and his youth coach Peter Sager. Even the mother of his rival Marco Pantani, who died in 2004 and whom Ullrich had to bow to in the fight for Tour victory in 1998, was present.
In 1997, Ullrich was the only German to win the Tour of France and triggered an unprecedented cycling boom in the neighboring country. He was celebrated as the “Boris Becker of cycling” and sponsors and organizers lined up to see him. In addition to his overall victory in 1997, Ullrich finished second on the Tour five times. He became world champion and Olympic champion.
In the past few days, Ullrich had spoken in interviews regarding years of doping in his Telekom team. “Without helping, the widespread perception at the time was that it would be like going to a shooting armed with only a knife,” Ullrich told Stern magazine. In the Telekom team he “learned pretty quickly that doping was widespread.”
Ullrich had to involuntarily end his career in 2006 following he was exposed as a customer of the Spanish doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes in the large-scale “Operacion Puerto”. In 2012, Ullrich was banned for two years by the International Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), and various successes between 2005 and 2006 were revoked. Ullrich later admitted that Fuentes had been treated, but he was unable to bring himself to confess to doping like he did with his ex-colleagues Erik Zabel or Rolf Aldag – even on the advice of his lawyers.
It is unclear whether the new statements have consequences for Ullrich’s previous victories – especially in the 1997 Tour. Ullrich’s former rival Lance Armstrong, for example, was stripped of all seven Tour victories from 1999 to 2005 following his lifetime ban in 2013. Bjarne Riis, who confessed to doping in 2007, is still listed as the overall winner in 1996. Ullrich’s 2000 Olympic gold should not be in danger because of the ten-year IOC statute of limitations for doping offenses.
After his abrupt end to his career, Ullrich also made negative headlines outside of sport. After his marriage to his wife Sara broke up, there was a “total crash” in Mallorca, as he recently told “Stern”. Ullrich drank “whiskey like water” and took cocaine, as he explained in a trailer for the Amazon documentary. After an argument with neighbor and actor Til Schweiger, Ullrich ended up in prison for one night and a short time later in the private clinic for addictions.
One of the first visitors was Armstrong, who helped his old rival. The American persuaded Ullrich to go through withdrawal so that he would not end up like the Italian Pantani, who died of an overdose in 2004. “I mightn’t bear to lose another one of us,” Armstrong said in an interview with Zeit magazine.
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