Fearless Greg Lemond said:
Yeah, that must be why Jan ended up 34 seconds down on Olano in the 1995 Vuelta prologue. In 7K that is. Another 5 minutes down in a 41K TT that Vuelta.
He did much better in the mountains, losing only 32 minutes on stage 8, climbing with mountain goats like:
105. Wust (Cat/AIe) a32’ 29
106. Knaven(TVM/Hol)id.
122. Ozers(Mot/Lit)id.
123. Abdosjaparoe (Noe/Uzb)id.
12S. Calcaterra (Sae/Ita)íd.
127. Livingston (Mot/USA)id.
129. Hincapie (MoR/USA)id.
135. Vogels (Nov/***)id.
139. Ulrich (Tel/Ale)id.
140.Van Hooydonck(Nos/8e1)id.
144. Simeoni (Car/Isa)id.
145. Andreu(MoR/U
The next day he climbed with the same goats, losing only 15 minutes.
Abandoning on stage 15, 1 hour and 52 minutes down in GC, surrounded by guys like
109. Van Petegem (TVM/BeI).al h.52’31”
110. Weltz(Mot/Din)a 18.52’ 53”
111. Wesemann (Tel/Ale)al h.53’44”
112. Ozers (Mot/lit)al h.55’OS”
113. Livingston (Mol/USA).... al h.55’24”
114. Meler ÇFVM/Sui)al h.56’30”
115. Lance(Gan/Fra)alh.57’03”
116. Kummer (Tel/Ale)al h.57’32”
117. Van Hooydonck(Nov/BeI)a 1 h.58’23
A full ten months later der Ulle was 101 seconds down to Bjarne for the Tour win. Gotta love them marginal gains. I do wonder what guys like Kasper Ozers were thinking, or Bouwmans, or Livingston. Even Bernd Dietz showed more climbing abilities. Or Boogerd for that matter.
Not only that, in a lot of newsitems surrounding Ullrich in 1993/1994 the word 'SPURT' is found, spurt means sprint.
No doubt he was a very talented rider, so was Voigt, so was Rumsas etc etc.
I agree, to a certain extend. Too bad I cant find the 1994 Baby Giro GC.
Two important things about 1995.
First of all, Ullrich was originally sheduled to race the Tour de France.
However, shortly before the Tour in 1995 Godefrot decided not to include Ullrich in the squad.
Remember, in 1995 Telekom had only 6 spots at the Tour.
The pressure was very high on the team. Godefrod decided that it wouldn't be smart to put Ullrich as a rookie in that kind of situation.
Ullrich was very disapointed about this obviously. His training was sheduled for a peak in July. Not being able to race during the Tour, Ullrich crashed all the records on the mountains of the Schwarzwald.
This story is credible as it was told by memembers of Telekom way before there have ever been doping accusations against Ullrich.
By August, Ullrichs shape was already declining and he also got ill.
As the Vuelta arrived, Ullrich' shape wasn't too good anymore.
Furthermore, Ullrich was not on Epo in 1995.
Telekom had start working with Epo in 1995 but not full scale. They were in a trial and error year so to say. They had realized that Epo was wide spread in the whole peleton and that they had to do something about it. So they started it too, but not all riders were already included yet.
One of the guys who was a first test person within telekom was Bert Dietz, who also talked about this alter. Remember, Dietz won a mountain stage in the Vuelta in 1995.
However, Ullrich was not put on Epo before 1996.
So a 21 year old rookie with a declining shape coming of an illness was doing is first Grand Tour in a field that was 80% Epo juiced to the max.
It's not too suprising that his results weren't that good in this Vuelta.
But using this as a proof against Ullrichs talent is far fetched considering the whole story.