Jan Ullrich

[Robert5091]

Any news on Ullrich's rehab stint?

 

[Susan Westemeyer]

Re:

Any news on Ullrich's rehab stint?

Not a word. Let's hope this means he is actually getting real help. His first stint at rehab where he talked to the media just about every day turned out poorly.

 

[Robert5091]

Re: Re:

Any news on Ullrich's rehab stint?

Not a word. Let's hope this means he is actually getting real help. His first stint at rehab where he talked to the media just about every day turned out poorly.

No news is good news, in other words. Hope he realizes he's in the best place to be and sticks with the program.

 

[RedheadDane]

Ullrich fined for assault of escort in Germany | CyclingTips

Berlin, Aug 28, 2019 (AFP) — Jan Ullrich, winner of the 1997 Tour de France, has been fined for attacking an escort in a Frankfurt hotel room in August of 2018. In a statement, the state prosecutor in Frankfurt said without naming the accused that a former German professional cyclist had been...

cyclingtips.com

 

[SHAD0W93]

A small fine for a bad thing he did. Hopefully the woman is doing okay and as no news (at least in English) have come up about Ullrich that he is fixing the nose dive. I wouldn't be surprised if she is/tried to sue him in civil court for the battery.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Question: what's known about Jan Ullrich's doping programme?

We have the Freiburg report, which says the team was on EPO from about the same time as Motorola, and then switched to blood bags in the noughties. Throughout this time they had available to them the full range of other products.

How did he end up having to shop at the Lidl of doping that was Fuentes? Was it the prices - just €35k a year - or was it the variety of products available in the centre aisle? Was it Cecchini sent him there?

What is known of his time as a junior, within the GDR doping regime?

As some like to do the whole how-crap-would-Armstrong-have-been-without-the-doping thing, what can we say of Ullrich? That he would have been pretty bad, given his attitude to training?

 

[Merckx index]

Race Radio, long since gone from this forum, used to claim that Ullrich was a super-responder, due to having a very high density of blood vessels in his legs, or something like that. He never provided any evidence for that, though, other than some claims by some doping doctors, and stories about how in training rides, when he was presumably not doping, Ullrich appeared to be a very ordinary rider.

 

[red_flanders]

Ullrich fined for assault of escort in Germany | CyclingTips

Berlin, Aug 28, 2019 (AFP) — Jan Ullrich, winner of the 1997 Tour de France, has been fined for attacking an escort in a Frankfurt hotel room in August of 2018. In a statement, the state prosecutor in Frankfurt said without naming the accused that a former German professional cyclist had been...

cyclingtips.com

Wow. That's some serious business. Brings up memories of several former cyclists spiraling in a morass of drugs and depression. I hope he can pull out of it, always seemed like a pretty decent guy, but wow. Shocking to read.

 

[Aragon]

The following quote is from an "instant-message" dialogue between JV and Frankie Andreu from 2005:
"hell, Kevin [Livingston] was telling me that after 2000 Ullrich never raced over 42%"
Livingston was Ullrich's Telekom teammate only for a brief time period, but JV doesn't appear to question the information in the private conversation that came to light only during the SCA hearings.

 

[roundabout]

And Moreau finished 4th on nothing and 39% Hct.

Ullrich was doing what his rivals were doing in 1998 and 2005-2006. There is no reason for me to think that it was any different between those 2 periods.

And edit: Ullrich was likely working with Fuentes since the end of 2003

 

[SHAD0W93]

Wasn't there a rumor that he was pretty clean in 2001 and trained a lot but the thrashing by Armstrong caused him to go into the depression in 2002?

 

[Aragon]

When Ullrich was asked to return his 2000 olympic medals, he refused and emphasized that he got no benefit from his PED use but was only doing what the others did.

Still whereas there is more or less solid information about his PED use in the 1990s from Telekom/Freiburg-report and from D'Hondt and rHuEPO retests etc., very little is known about the years 2000-2003 in which Vaughters (roughly) refers to. My reading is that JV believed the information to be true, accurate or not.

I don't know what to make of the story, because he has since also maintained that nobody of the CA riders doped when the team won the a TT at the 2001 TDF.

 

[fmk_RoI]

I don't know what to make of the story, because he has since also maintained that nobody of the CA riders doped when the team won the a TT at the 2001 TDF.

He repeats that claim in the new book, but my reading of it there it was said more in hope than conviction. I mean, if others in the team weren't aware he had gone back on the hot sauce at CA, then how could he expect to know what each of them was really doing? (Plus: it'd be a bit of a miracle given elsewhere in the book he hardly allows any room for clean riders with the exception of the blessèd Bassons.)

I rate the story about the same value as much of the peloton scuttlebut repeated by Hamilton: interesting, but needs corroboration.

 

[fmk_RoI]

Race Radio, long since gone from this forum, used to claim that Ullrich was a super-responder, due to having a very high density of blood vessels in his legs, or something like that. He never provided any evidence for that, though, other than some claims by some doping doctors, and stories about how in training rides, when he was presumably not doping, Ullrich appeared to be a very ordinary rider.

As I've said before, I view the super-responder thing as similar to the Higgs constant in string theory: it's a neat explanation without proof.

The high density of blood vessels - it's not that different from saying another rider had more slow-twitch muscles.

Ullrich appearing to be a very ordinary rider in training: my feeling with Ullrich (and it's just a feeling, not fully founded on evidence) is that he needed motivation, he wasn't out there proving himself against everyone all the time. To me, there's a difference between riders like Ullrich and riders like, say, Rasmussen: the latter was massively motivated, driven to succeed, whereas Ullrich, you kind of get the feeling that once he'd proved himself and won the Tour, the desire wasn't there.