Sport Ex-cycling star
“I am guilty” – Jan Ullrich explicitly admits to doping for the first time
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Jan Ullrich as a driver in Team Telekom. In Magenta he won the Tour de France in 1997
Those: dpa/Gero Breloer
Former cycling star Jan Ullrich explicitly admits for the first time that he took doping substances during his career. “I didn’t want to get a lead; for me at the time it was a kind of equal opportunity,” said the 1997 Tour de France winner.
Now it is out. Jan Ullrich used doping substances during his successful cycling career. The winner of the 1997 Tour de France explicitly admitted this after 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.”
Ullrich had always refused to confess to doping in the past. “I haven’t cheated on anyone,” was always his standard response to questions about his past. Now the fallen ex-professional cyclist, who has also experienced some turbulence in his private life, wants to clear up his past in the documentary. “I can say from the pureness of my heart, I really didn’t want to cheat anyone. I didn’t want to get a head start. That was a different time back then. Back then, cycling already had a system that I came into. For me at the time it was a kind of equal opportunity,” explained Ullrich during the panel discussion.
Many companions came to the performance in Munich on Wednesday. Including ex-team boss Olaf Ludwig, his sporting director Rudy Pevenage, ex-colleagues such as Ivan Basso, Jens Heppner and Danilo Hondo, his youth coach Peter Sager and even the mother of the deceased rival Marco Pantani.
The former professional cyclist Jan Ullrich presents his documentary “Jan Ullrich – The Hunted” in Munich
Source: dpa/Angelika Warmuth
In 1997, Ullrich was the only German to win the Tour of France and triggered an unprecedented cycling boom. 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.
Ullrich talks about doping
In the past few days, Ullrich had spoken in interviews about years of doping in his Telekom team. “Without helping, that was the widespread perception at the time, it would be like going to a shooting armed with only a knife,” Ullrich told “Stern”. In the Telekom team he “learned pretty quickly that doping was widespread.”
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Ullrich had to involuntarily end his career in 2006 after he was exposed as a customer of the 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 Sports (Cas), and various successes between 2005 and 2006 were revoked. Ullrich later admitted that Fuentes had undergone treatment, but he could not bring himself to confess to doping like his ex-colleagues Erik Zabel or Rolf Aldag – even on the advice of the lawyers.
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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 after 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 did coke, he said in the Amazon documentary, as can be seen in the trailer. After an argument with neighbor and TV star 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 wouldn’t end up like the Italian Pantani, who died of an overdose in 2004. “I couldn’t bear to lose another one of us,” Armstrong said in an interview with “Zeit”.
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