Beginning of all ups and downs
When Jan Ullrich flies “epochal” into the yellow jersey
7/15/2022 7:01 am
Exactly 25 years ago Jan Ullrich flies up to Andorra Arcalis and into the yellow jersey of the tour. Cycling’s “talent of the century” dissects the group of favorites and a fascinating story of radiant glory and dark valleys begins.
The biggest win in his young career seems to overwhelm Jan Ullrich a bit. On July 15, 1997, the young man from Rostock politely received the obligatory kisses for the winner, slipped into the yellow jersey of the tour for the first time and looked shyly down from the podium. Minutes earlier, the redheaded prodigy with freckles and a gold hoop earring in his left earlobe, anything but shy, flew up the climb to Andorra Arcalis, turning the cycling world on its head for good.
“Epochal”, “From Another Planet”, “Century Talent”, “Le Patron” – the otherwise rather sober cycling commentators of the 90s outdo each other with superlatives on this summer’s day. Ullrich’s triumph in the yellow jersey, with which he lays the foundation for his later tour victory, leaves no one indifferent. “It was just super impressive what he did there,” says his then teammate Rolf Aldag of ARD in retrospect: “You see it on TV, aware of your own pain, that he started with the big chainring.”
Ullrich launches an attack on the large chain ring that breaks the group of favorites up into their individual parts. A year after the stable orders in Team Telekom and captain Bjarne Riis slowed him down, Ullrich is driving the competition to the ground. Twelve days later he crowned himself the winner of the Tour in Paris – as the first and so far only German cyclist.
Ullrich loses traction
“I’m happy that I now have the yellow one, but at the moment you don’t understand it at all,” says Ullrich after his Arcalis masterpiece. The then 23-year-old remains completely modest – and he just triggered nothing less than a huge hype in Germany. In the summer of 1997, the country becomes a cycling nation. “It was almost like 1954 when Germany became soccer world champion,” recalls reporter legend Herbert Watterott on ARD. And even with today’s knowledge of the depravity and the willingness to manipulate cycling in the nineties – the time fascinates to this day.
Ullrich was a superstar back then – on a par with Michael Schumacher, Boris Becker or Steffi Graf. But sporty things are never going as well as they did in the summer of 1997. Instead of winning the tour several times in the coming years, as numerous experts predict, Ullrich repeatedly fails because of himself – and because of his permanent rival Lance Armstrong. But he experienced his greatest defeat after his career. When the German fans dropped their darling after the doping revelations of 2006, he completely lost his grip on reality. Ullrich, who keeps gathering the wrong people around him, alcohol and drugs get to him, he almost loses his life.
In the meantime, despite a few setbacks and with the help of Lance Armstrong, among others, he has fought his way back to life. Jan Ullrich will certainly be able to enjoy the anniversary of that hot summer day when a shy redhead from Rostock flew out to the Olympus of the Tour.