Cycling star Jan Ullrich. © ANSA / GIAN EHRENZELLER

Jan Ullrich: “Yes, I doped”

Former German cycling star Jan Ullrich has explicitly admitted for the first time that he took doping substances during his career.

22 November 2023

From: dpa/det

The 1997 Tour de France champion 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 got into. For me at the time it was a kind of equal opportunity,” explained Ullrich during the panel discussion.

Triggered a cycling boom

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.

Jan Ullrich admitted to doping. © ANSA / OLIVER WEIKEN

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 shootout armed only with a knife,” Ullrich told the magazine Star. In the Telekom team he “learned pretty quickly that doping was widespread.”

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.