Former elite road rider Jan Ullrich openly admitted for the first time that he had doped during his professional cycling career. The 1997 Tour de France winner and Olympic and World Champion did so seventeen years after retiring from the sport. He spoke at today’s presentation of the film documentary series shot for the Prime Video streaming platform “Jan Ullrich – Hunting” in Munich.
“I doped, it’s clear from the document,” said the 49-year-old German rider. “I was guilty and I feel guilty,” German media quoted Ullrich as saying. At the same time, she recalled that until now Ullrich had denied all suspicions and defended himself against questions about his past with the obligatory sentence: “I have not deceived anyone”.
Now he decided to come out with the whole truth on the occasion of the creation of the documentary. “I can say with a pure heart that I really didn’t want to cheat anyone. I didn’t want to secure an advantage for myself. It was a different time then. Back then there was already a system in cycling that I jumped into. For me, it meant equal opportunities in a way.” stated Ullrich during a discussion in the presence of other cycling aces, including the former head of his Telekom team Olaf Ludwig or colleagues Ivan Bass, Jens Heppner and Danilo Honda.
“For me it started in 1996,” he told the SID agency. “The hardest thing was that you knew from the beginning that you had no chance otherwise,” he stated. He was not afraid of health consequences, because it was a systematic matter and everything took place under medical supervision.
Ullrich is the only German winner of the famous Tour de France so far, and he also finished second at the “Old Lady” five times. He won the mass start at the Sydney Olympics and was second in the time trial, which he alternately dominated at the 1999 and 2001 World Championships.
He had to end his career involuntarily in 2006 due to the case surrounding the Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, which was revealed by the Puerto anti-doping action. Ullrich was one of his clients, and the CAS Court of Arbitration for Sport later punished him with a two-year ban and disqualified him from racing in 2005 and 2006. Only later did Ullrich admit to contacts with Fuentes and, later, to helping himself to success with blood doping. But he always denied that he used EPO and took other banned substances.
2023-11-22 19:48:01
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