Jan Ulrich
Jan Ulrich remains Germany’s greatest cyclist and also its only Tour de France winner.
Jan was the ultimate missile that never got used.
Arcalis
Stage ten of the 1997 Tour from Luchon to the Araclis ski resort, was a monster at 242 kilometres. Ulrich won it. Ulrich’s 500-watt rampage from El Serrat had been, physiologically speaking, the most prodigious effort the Tour had ever seen on a long climb.
Jan Ulrich have the East a lot of pride, a lot of confidence. Like Franziska van Almsick, a few actors and actresses, one and two singers. They were all East had.
One in 17 million
The greatest road cyclist that Germany has ever seen was a mistake. It was a happy accident when his mother fell pregnant in the spring of 1973. Rostock was his town. City that joined the Hanseatic League in 1251. It is also home of the oldest university in Northern Europe.
His father Werner Ulrich left quickly.
His first father figure and coach was Peter Sagert. He says that if they would not meet, Jan would be a runner.
The motherlode of elite sport in the DDR, the Dynamo association existed under the aegis of the civilian police and the notorious Stasi, whose chief, Erich Mielke, was also Dynamo’s president.
Jan take part in his first ever bicycle race on 8 April 1984.
By the end of 1986 Ulrichs moved from Papendorf back to Rostock. In 1987 Jan went to trials that would determined who is going back to a residential KJS and who will go to Dynamo Berlin. Jan went to Berlin. His older brother was heading in the other direction from Berlin to Rostock.
DDR has strong training programme, but also massive funding, talent identification programme and probably drugs.
Diplomats in tracksuits
With his arrival at Dynamo Berlin, Ulrich had joined approximately 10.000 young East Germans on the middle rung of the DDR talent ladder.
He get new coach Peter Becker.
In 1964, a year before a catalytic moment in East Germany’s weaponization of elite sport: the pharmaceutical company, VEB Jenapharm, synthesizing Oral Turinabol, the testosterone-boosting anabolic steroid that later became the DDR coaches’ Wunderwuffe – their wonder weapon.
Ulrich enjoyed and thrived withing the framework of a rigid routine, just as long as he didn’t have to create that structure itself.
Over the rainbow
Wolfgang Strohband was Ulrich’s manager and the second-hand car dealer.
Ulrich was chosen for words in the amateur race and he became the youngest world amateur champion since Eddy Merckx in 1964. Professional race in Oslo in 1993 was won by Lance Armstrong. Ulrich also got bronze in time travel but in professional race.
For Christmas, Gaby gave him a silver earning which from that point on he never took from his left earlobe.
Ulrich just had the problem that he trusted people too easily. He’s too gullible. He always thinks everything’s just great.
The apprentice
In the 1995 season Telekom were welcoming just one rookie, a red-headed, freckle-faced twenty-one-year-old from Rostock. Walter Godefroot had signed Ulrich on the strength of his cycling.
Ulrich form in spring was not great. Godefroot send Rolf Aldag and Bert Dietz to join Ulrich in training in the Black Forest. Ulrich only needed three days to build his form. Jan thrived on being surrounded by mates, camaraderie. He’s a people person. He just didn’t enjoy training on his own.
This first year he was third in Tour de Suisse and German time-trail champion. And he didn’t finish the Vuelta.
Eureka
A quarter of a century has passed since Bjarne Riis first met Jan Ulrich. When he met him, Ulrich was ambitious, curios. He later changed.
Riis, Telekom’s new leader was third in 1995 Tour. When he joined Telekom in 1995 he has been using EPO for over a year. His blood values would one day earn him the nickname ‘Mister Sixty Per Cent’.
Ulrich achieved 560 watts as maximum aerobic power in the test at the University of Freiburg, before the Tour.
Ulrich salary went from 150.000 deutsche mark to 600.000.
Ulrich helped Riis won the Tour. He actually could have won that tour, he was probably stronger than Riis.
That year UCI also announced that they would be rolling out a programme of blood tests and a 50 per cent haematocrit limit in 1997 season.
The new giant
Germany’s first ever Tour de France stage winner and the first German to wear the yellow jersey was Kurt Stopel. It was in 1932.
Before the Tour, Jan lost only five days of training due to illness. He did 23.800 km since the previous December including 10.600 in races.
At stage 12, the time trial around Saint-Etienne, Ulrich passed Virenque who started 3 minutes before him. And Virenque was second in that time trial.
He won 1997 Tour and media started talking about 10-year winner in making. Ule-mania started.
Hunger games
Rudy Pevenage knew they had a problem when he looked inside the fridge. He realized that Ulrich appetite is stronger than he is. Jan loves food as much as cycling.
When Jan came to training camp in Mallorca in January, there was no more hiding.
During the spring he fought the added cargo of kilos and at the start of the Tour he was within 5 kilo of his 1997 Tour weight.
But the big news of the 1998 Tour was Wily Voet arrest due to banned drugs and EPO they found in his car. He was Festina’s guy.
Ulrich lost that tour to Pantani on the stage 15 in the mountain, due to bad weather.
The truth will set you free
Telekom’s Head of Communications, Jurgen Kiderwater, was concerned with negative image of cycling. He was a regular visitor to the Tour.
Germany was very familiar with drugs. All started already in the both wars. And cumulated in the Eastern Germany regime.
The Telekom cycling team was entrusted to University of Freiburg and Joseph Keul in 1991. Keul argued in 1977 that blood transfusions could not be considered doping.
Lance
Bruyneel said that Ulrich was always a fear, but he never got everything right.
Lance said that Ulrich was his north star.
Promises
Walfred Goodfroot summoned his class of 1999 to a conference room. His official line was, after what had happened at previous year’s Tour, no banned drugs would be taken, transported or tolerated.
Godefroot wasn’t too much bothered with Ulrich lack of motivation in 1999. He said that if he wanted to quit, let him quit. Pevenage, Becker and even Jurgen Kindervater were on the other hand Ulrich’s fans.
Ulrich learned in the DDR that the boss was the boss, and an order was an order.
Der Spiegel article that year – Die Werte Spielen Werruckt – The Values are Playing Tricks – was devastating for Telekom and Ulrich. Ulrich and Telekom both filed a lawsuit against Spiegel.
Ulrich had damaged the meniscus in his right knee. He wasn’t riding the Tour. There was also no Riis.
But his 1999 Vuelta reignited his passion for professional cycling. He became the third German to triumph in Vuelta after Rudi Altig and Rolf Wolfshohl.
He also learned a lesson, that he needed more racing and less training to get in shape.
Reality check
Giovanni Lombardi says that if Godefroot or anyone else could have screwed Erik’s (Zabel) head onto Jan’s body, they would have had Eddy Merckx.
It is widely documented that the practice of transfusing blood to boost the supply of oxygen to muscles was adopted, if not pioneered, by Finnish distance runners in the 1970s. In 1986, IOC banned blood transfusions.
In 1983, an American pharmaceutical company Amgen cloned the gene for human erythropoietin. In 1988 a synthetic or recombinant form of erythropoietin was approved in Europe. In June 1989, Amgen launched its EPO in the USA. The IOC added EPO to its banned list the following year. The UCI followed suit in 1991.
Jaksche says Telekom stopped bringing EPO to races.
Ulrich was at 68 kilos in 1996 and 1997 according to Becker. In 2000 he was at 74 and had the numbers of 1997. The first mountain stage of the Tour took the peloton to Hautacam. After the stage Armstrong had four minutes on Ulrich. Again it was a bad weather day. Ulrich finished second for the third time.
He went to Vuelta to prepare for the Olympic Games. He won gold in the road race and silver in the TT (Ekimov winning due to better wind conditions).
Untouchable
Pevenage and Bruyneel live in the same village. The area is also known for the Muur.
Pevenage said that if you would put Ulrich and Armstrong in quarantine for a month before a Tour de France, it’s Jan who will win the Tour.
Telekom signed Kevin Livingston from Armstong team. In 2001 Ulrich would finally get more serious with his professionalism.
Ulrich big gear, low cadence style was due to his big power.
He would race Giro for the first time in 2001. He finished in a lowly fifty-second place.
Pevenage said that in 2001 they get US Postal’s frequency from Vicente Belda, directeur sportif of Kelme. But Bruynell knew that. It was the year of famous Alpe d’Huez Armstrong’s The Look. Armstrong won, Ulrich was second again.
Love and other drugs
Jan knee was injured. Durgin recovery he had problems with alcohol, driving under the influence of it and with his relationship with Gaby.
He missed the Tour.
He failed the doping test. He received six-month ban. His contract with Telekom had been voided by his positive test.
Bob Stapelton took Jan to Whistler. But than Ulrich finally moved to Switzerland.
Little man of dreams
The road less traveled had been sold to Ulrich and Wolfgang Strohband by Coast’s owner Gunther Dahms. But some financial problems led to UCI withholding the team’s racing licences. Ulrich stood to earn around 2,5 million euros a season.
During the training in the spring Ulrich fell in love with Tuscany. He also met Luigi Cecchini. Cecchini worked briefly alongside Michele Ferrari. In the next years those two were the main names in the cycling, not in a good way.
Cecchini worked together with Fuentes. And he also worked with Ulrich.
Two reasons why Ulrich 2003 was so good was that he was really motivated and he didn’t want to let down Cecchini. According to Cecchini.
Reboot, reinvention
Coast problems went away when Bianchi released enough cash to keep them afloat. And finally they took over the team and created Team Bianchi.
Sliding doors
Ulrich beaten Armstrong in a Tour prologue for the first time. He then wrote a good team time-travel with him doing all the work. He got sick and lost some time on Alpe d’Huez. But than the individual time-travel came and Ulrich destroyed Armstrong.
It was only on Luz Ardiden when Armstrong took some time on Ulrich.
The rain on time-travel day and Ulrich had a crash and Armstrong won that Tour also, another second for Ulrich.
After the love has gone
Ulrich was back in Telekom. But Godefroot had a hard time allowing Pevenage back. They find a compromise, where he would still work with Ulrich privately.
Ulrich had good Tour of Switzerland but the Tour was again Armstrong’s playground. Ulrich was only fourth and Kolden his teammate finishing in second place.
That year in February Marco Pantani had died in Rimini.
Jesus Manzano talked about the doping practices in the peloton. That started a lot of things in the next years.
Ulrich’s 2004 campaign was the worst since 1995.
In 2005 Telekom was talking about three-pronged Ulrich-Kloden-Vinokurov attack. But they all did poorly in the first alpine stage. Ulrich finished third overall in Paris.
A message to you, Rudy
Spain the Guardia Civil begin tapping Fuentes’s phones as part of Operacion Puerto – Operation Mountain Pass.
Ulrich was riding Giro in 2006.
Manolo Sainz was named Fatty in Fuentes notes. He was in the Liberty Seguros. He was arrested together with Fuentes.
The links between Ulrich and Fuentes were all over the press. Ulrich didn’t finish the Giro.
The vanishing
Jaksche was at a Liberty Seguros training camp when he learned that Fuentes and Sainz were arrested.
Code name for Ulrich was the song of Rudy – Hijo de Rudicio.
Pevenage had a feeling that something would happened a few days before the Tour. Ulrich was suspended and out of the Tour. He wanted to retire in 2006 at the Deutschland Tour.
Checkmate
Fuentes uncle helped build Union Deportiva Las Palmas, the football club.
Fuentes spent two years at Once.
With Jan Ulrich cycling became a mainstream sport in Germany. And with Jan Ulrich it will fall at least halfway back down again.
Ulrich made payment to Fuentes in 2004 and 2006.
Nine bags of blood in Barcelona was indeed Ulrich’s.
Storming Fort Knox
T-Mobile doctor was Lothar Heinrich. Bob Stapelton whom T-Mobile now wanted to save the team, was also quite taken with Heinrich. He was shovelling you shit the whole time, said about him.
Many Telekom riders admitted taking doping, but Ulrich was reluctant.
Ron Sommmer, the Telekom CEO until 2002, had also been deceived by the Freiburg doctors.
Godefroot tested positive three times in his riding career.
When UCI introduced the 50 percent hematocrit limit in 1997, they issued open invitation to dope up to that level.
The Freiburg commission would devote considerable effort to finding out how much Telekom knew about their team’s doping. Two reports were written, one in 2009 and one in 2015. No one in the Telekom management knew, they trusted the team’s officials.
Telekom eventually decided to pull out of the sport in 2008.
Nadir
Ulrich himself talked about a knot in his head that had become too big to untangle of his own. He went to a clinic in Zurich.
He find out that riding a bike makes him happy again. He also got the second child with Sara. His name was Benno, the first child with Sara he got in 2007, boy named Max.
UCI decided in 2012 that Ulrich would be banned for two years and he could keep all the results until 2005.
In 2015 Jan and Sara moved to Mallorca. But Sara quickly moved back to Germany with kids.
Ulrich was one day arrested in Mallorca for breaking into the back garden of Til Schweiger.
Ulrich complicated relationship with alcohol had been an open secret for year. But he was also taking a lot of amphetamine derivates pills.
Armstrong tried to help him.
Epilogue
Ulrich returned to Merdingen.
Ulrich inability to open up, to recognize that shame cannot survive the light, has at least compounded his turmoil over the last years.
