BERLIN: Jan Ullrich, Germany’s only winner of the Tour de France, has for the first time admitted to doping with the help of Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes who ran a large-scale doping network.
“Yes, I had access to treatment from Fuentes,” the 1997 winner of the Tour de France told German weekly Focus in its edition to appear tomorrow
“At that time, nearly everyone was using doping substances and I used nothing that the others were not using.”
In the Focus report, Ullrich has insisted he used no other doping substance other than his own blood, presumably with transfusions to combat the effects of lactic acid.
Ullrich, who also won road race gold and time-trial silver medals at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, said he was motivated by the desire to be competing on a level playing field with his main rivals.
“In my view you can only call it cheating on my part when it is clear that I have gained an unfair advantage,” he argued.
“That was not the case. All I wanted was everyone to have the same chances of winning.”
He also told Focus he believed that the main factors contributing towards his success in cycling were pure talent, effort, team spirit and the will to win and that the damage he had done by doping was mainly to himself,
“It was myself who suffered most because of this episode as concerns my public image and what it meant for my own health,” he said.
“Now it is time to bring down the curtain on all of this. I want to look to the future and no longer be dragged back to the past.”
Ullrich’s doping admission comes months after a similar public pronouncement by his greatest career rival and nemesis Lance Armstrong. The seven-time Tour de France winner, admitted to doping throughout his career in January and was subsequently stripped of his Tour titles and banned for life. AFP
