“I wasn’t far from death”
Jan Ullrich talks about his years of doping
November 21, 2023, 12:14 a.m
Jan Ullrich is one of the country’s great sports idols, then the cycling star falls. Now he speaks openly about doping, drugs, escapades and his rediscovered hunger for life.
In 1997, Jan Ullrich flies into the yellow jersey of the Tour de France in Andorra-Arcalis, and a few days later the 23-year-old becomes the first German to win the largest cycling spectacle in the world. Ullrich climbs to the rank of national sports idol. But he can’t stay there for long: doping offenses, drugs, exclusion from the tour, expulsion from Team Telekom – the cycling star’s sporting legacy was damaged early on.
After his career ended, things got even worse: Ullrich caused a car accident while under the influence of alcohol, he drank “whiskey like water” and consumed cocaine in large quantities. In 2018, after separating from his wife Sara, he collapsed: alcohol, drugs, nicotine. “The crash in 2018 almost cost me my life, I lost a lot,” said Ullrich in an interview with “Stern” published on Thursday. “I wasn’t far from death. At the time, I didn’t want to see that I was well on the way to destroying myself.” It was “a mystery to him how I endured that.”
“Then how do you want to survive in the race?”
He suppresses his own doping career instead of dealing with it. That almost broke him. Now he speaks in detail about his doping past, which he had always denied for many, many years: “If you want to keep up, you have to take part,” says Ullrich in “Stern”. Doping felt “completely normal” back then. “The general attitude was: If you don’t do that, how are you going to survive in a race? Without help, the widespread perception at the time was, it would be like going to a shootout armed only with a knife.” He quickly submitted to this compulsion after joining Team Telekom as a professional in 1995.
During and after his career, the convicted doper Ullrich had always publicly defended himself by saying that he had not cheated anyone – even though the public prosecutor’s office announced unequivocally in 2008: “Our investigations over 21 months have shown that Ullrich did dope.” There are no charges and the proceedings are discontinued after a payment of 250,000 euros. In 2013 he made at least a partial confession that he had “used Fuentes treatments”, i.e. doped with his own blood.
“It makes you a monster”
While former teammates like Erik Zabel, Rolf Aldag and Jörg Jaksche have made doping confessions of varying quality over the years, Ullrich says he won’t confess for ages. At times it’s an absurd spectacle as Ullrich wraps himself around the words “I doped!” maneuvers around while stars of his generation provide detailed information about their own doping practices. Ullrich himself now regrets not coming clean sooner, he says. “In 2006 I wasn’t able to talk because I didn’t want to be a traitor.” This scenario was outlined to him again and again: “The lawyers told me: Either you go out and tear everything down, or you don’t say anything at all. I decided on the second recommendation at the time. Because tearing everything down would also have meant that I “I’m dragging a lot of people down with me into the abyss.”
He ended his career in 2007, a year after his team T-Mobile suspended him the day before the start of the Tour de France because of new doping revelations. “My past weighed so heavily on my soul. It was so big and so stressful,” Ullrich told “Stern” today. In the conversation, the ex-professional cyclist also describes his dealings with drugs and alcohol, especially the interaction of whiskey and cocaine. “It brings out all the evil qualities in you. It turns you into a monster in no time.” “It wasn’t easy to remain silent for so many years,” says Ullrich today.
“I want to see my children grow up”
The drive for the comeback runs in the family. It was only his wife’s threat that he would no longer be allowed to see the children that caused him to seek medical treatment in 2018 – after the “total crash”. “I want to see my children grow up,” says the former radio idol who thrilled millions of Germans in the late 1990s, before he was dragged out of the sports Olympus more mercilessly than almost anyone before him. Ullrich has four children. Ullrich has three sons with his ex-wife Sara. He also has a daughter from his previous relationship with Gaby Weis.
All crashes should now be overcome, reports the fallen and – this is his own hope – once again recovered cycling hero to the “Stern”. “Thank God I came out of the story healthy. I’m glad that I made it back, that I’m back in life with both feet. And that I also found the strength to come to terms with my life again or to clean up.” Ullrich is doing well today; he has gone through “hell,” as he called the years before he hit the ground.