Jan Ullrich was accompanied for two years for a documentary. During their introduction, the ex-professional cyclist talks about his past – and largely avoids one topic.
It was only a narrow stage in a Munich hotel that he was sitting on, and the audience was also small, and yet Jan Ullrich seemed unsteady. He didn’t know what to do with his hands; his voice sometimes faltered. Ullrich had decided to tell “the truth,” as he announced. In his case, telling the truth could only mean making a doping confession.
Ullrich, 49 years old, a former professional cyclist for Team Telekom and winner of the Tour de France in 1997, then suffered quite a bit. The sentence “I doped” didn’t want to come out of his mouth. Ullrich made an indirect confession. He said his earlier claim that “I didn’t cheat on anyone was of course wrong” because he had already deceived his fans. For many years, since his suspension from Team T-Mobile immediately before the start of the 2006 Tour of France, Ullrich had always resorted to a rhetorical trick. According to his understanding, “I didn’t cheat anyone” meant: Because all the racers manipulated, I didn’t cheat. I was just one of many – ultimately there was equality of arms.
Documentary “Jan Ullrich – the hunted”
The reason for his appearance in Munich was the presentation of the documentary “Jan Ullrich – the Hunted”, which will be shown on Amazon Prime from November 28th. The first episode was shown, and in this Ullrich is more visible than before on stage. He admits that he did blood doping during a tour of Italy. He “had a bag,” says Ullrich, a plastic bag with medically prepared autologous blood. This was returned to the body via transfusion before the race. “When you get the blood back, you notice a surge,” says Ullrich in the documentary.
That’s almost all that Ullrich says on this topic. Ullrich calls the Spanish gynecologist Eufemiano Fuentes, whose main job was not gynecology but blood doping, a “very sympastr.c1514036236dd90216ae532183655d55.css” fetchpriority=”high”>
Source: Stern
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