The Man who should have been King – A report on Jan Ullrich – My all time favourite Sportsman


I first fell in love with the cycling world during the 2003 Tour De France. Although I had heard many wonderful things about Lance Armstrong, his dominance over the last four years, the way he had beaten cancer despite being told afterwards that he had little more than three per cent chance of survival, becoming World Road Race Champion at just 21 years old age, the way he had revolutionalised a whole different style of riding with his high cadence pedalling. The story of Lance Arsmtrong is one that is easy to make him a hero to a young cyclist’s eyes. It was not however the lean superman from Texas who first captured my attention but rather his super talented nemesis Jan Ullrich. I don’t know what it was but when I saw Ullrich time trial a hilly 29 miles in under an hour in stage eleven of that year’s race and beat Armstrong by nearly two minutes in the stage I was in awe. There was something about that guy, he was as talented and skilful as Armstrong without sharing any of the American’s arrogance or brutality and seemed as optimistic and happy in the face of defeat as he did in victory. As the greatest tour of all time rolled on and the best rivalry since Lemond and Fignon became even more intense, I began to find out more about the enigmatic German.I learned a great deal that surprised me. Ullrich was a superstar cyclist a couple of years before Armstrong’s first Tour victory, having finished an incredible second in his first attempt as a 21 year old and then winning the Tour outright the next year by an amazingly dominant nine minutes. With his tender age and seemingly invincible form in both the mountains and in the time trials, at the time Ullrich was being tipped as the next great man of cycling, a man who had the great, natural talent to dominate cycling in the same vein as Anquetil, Merxx, and Indurain had done before him. In fact the great Eddy Merxx even proclaimed Ullrich to become the first man to win an unprecedented ten tours. The words must have been lost on Jan however, who after winning his first tour, felt a great deal of relief and began to let himself go over the winter. This was a habit that Ullrich would unfortunately fall into time and time again.Back then, his antics which to summarise, included eating badly, partying and cycling 30 miles a day when he could be bothered to, could probably have been attributed to the fact that he was still a very young man. Did he really want to commit his life to training? Was he aware of just how talented he was? The answer is probably not.As his mother said after witnessing her son win the 1997 Tour, ‘Jan is very shy, I don’t know how he will cope with all this attention and pressure.’Despite being overweight (when I say overweight, I mean for a Tour contender, Ullrich has never turned up for the Tour more than 73KG, which considering his 6.2 ft height and incredible muscle mass is an achievement for any mortal to be proud of)Ullrich had still managed to take the 1998 Tour by the scruff of its neck. After the Time Trial on stage seven of that year’s race, Ullrich was comfortably ahead of any rivals in First Place, whilst eventual winner Marco Pantani was over five minutes down, 43rd and already looking out of contention before the mountain stages had begun. What could go wrong for Ullrich who was already at the time the best climber in the world anyway? Well as has always been the case for the Rockstock Rocket, everything had the ability to go wrong and on the Stage 15 ascent into Les Deux Alpes, everything did. That day stage winner Marco Pantani put nine minutes into Jan Ullrich to take the Yellow Jersey and hold onto it until the end. For a great climber like Jan to lose nine minutes to someone on any type of climb was an extraordinary feat and one which some people look back to as the point where Jan began to lose his confidence as a bike rider, a time long before he had ever faced off against Lance.Despite winning two more stages that year including a mountain stage the next day, Jan was not able to claw back the time needed to reclaim his place at the top of the Tour standings and despite being the best rider for the large majority of the race, Ullrich had lost the Tour on one day. Mentally, he had allowed the pressure of defending the Tour to get to him. Had he trained more during the off-season (a phrase which Jan seemed to take to heart), Ullrich wouldn’t have had to struggle to reach race weight and would have won that year’s Tour with ease.I began to discover however that Ullrich was a deeply flawed character, seemingly unable to release his potential on a consistent level. When he had reached his potential previously the results had been extraordinary. Although Armstrong has been the best rider over the past seven years before his retirement, he has always had his team to thank. In 1997 Jan won without his team. Rather than letting his team wither away the opposition on the gruelling climbs, Ullrich would go through the unheard of act of going to the front of the peloton by himself and setting such an unbelievable pace that eventually no one else was able to stay to his wheel. He worked for himself and won for himself. In the modern era no one had ever seen anything quite like it and by becoming Germany’s first long awaited Tour champion, Jan had already earnt himself a legion of fans so early on in his career. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe success came too soon for the German. He had not had to work so hard for his success and so why would he have to work so hard for more? The answer is he didn’t and he never scaled the heights of his incredible 1997 Tour Victory again.After the 1998 Tour sorrow, Ullrich found himself injured by the time the 1999 Tour came into view. Many people at the time claimed that Ullrich’s injury was more mental than physical and that he was going through a nervous breakdown. They dismissed him and said that he would never be the same rider that he was once was.Ullrich answered the critics in the best way possible by bouncing back from his injury to win the third and fourth most important races of the year still, the World Championships Time Trial and the Vuelta a Espana. The critics were silenced and Ullrich was once again seen as the man to beat in the Tour 2000, of which last year’s win by Armstrong was seen as a fluke in an admittedly weak field.Armstrong, like Ullrich however had a knack for answering the critics and won that year’s tour from Ullrich with ease. Ullrich had finished second for the third time in his career at only 25 years of age. Despite defeat to Armstrong, Ullrich seemed in awe rather than in annoyance at the Great Texan. After losing to Lance the following year, Ullrich declared that he was invincible and simply too good for the rest of the field.In reality, Ullrich had given up on the battle with Lance before it had even begun. He thought he wasn’t as good as him and so therefore he wasn’t. If he had been as determined and trained as hard as his rival, perhaps we would have seen a different race. Ullrich has always declared however throughout his career that he has had no regrets and would not have changed a thing throughout his flawed career. He said more than once in reference to Lance’s life dominating training regime, that he likes to enjoy a life outside of cycling and have a good time away from the bike.Perhaps after 2001 he was having too good of a time however when in May 2002, a time when most professional cyclists would be fine tuning their form for the Tour, Ullrich was having his driving license revoked for drunk driving. That’s right, one of the world’s greatest athletes was out on the piss like some yob on the streets with nothing better to do than to cause havoc and be a libility towards themselves and others. Ullrich was banned from cycling for six months for taking drugs which he claimed were anti-depressants rather than performance enhancing. He was sacked by T-Mobile and joined Coast-Bianchi, a team who had no money and no other quality riders and who wouldn’t have been able to be part of the 2003 Tour were it not for Ullrich’s presence. With his last great result being his Second World Time Trial victory in 2001, no one really expected anything wonderful from Ullrich who was riding in a second rate team that couldn’t hope to give him the kind of support he would need during a three week bike race. It seemed however that too many people had forgotten that Jan didn’t need a team to win, he just needed himself at top form both physically and mentally and in 2003 he was. It just wasn’t quite enough.I watched that year’s Tour as a 15 year old boy in France myself, mesmorised by what I was seeing. Ullrich never had any team mates with him on the hard mountain stages like Armstrong did but it didn’t matter, he attacked and attacked and attacked again. He was courageous, in phenomenal shape and going into the now infamous Luz Arziden stage, he was fourteen seconds behind Arsmtrong and favourite to win. That stage is one of the most inspiring I have ever seen. Armstrong being brought down by a spectator only to fight his way back into the main bunch and win the stage outright. In how many sports could one man nearly have lost his chance at victory because of a fan. Many people credit Armstrong for his win that day but few credit Ullrich for slowing down when Armstrong was brought to his knees. For allowing Armstrong to make his way in to the bunch and before re-establishing his ryhtm watching a fresh Lance charge his way up the road to extend his lead to a minute. I often wonder whether or not Lance would have been so kind. Given his appetite for success, I think probably not. I lost respect for Lance when he made the claim that he didn’t think that Ullrich had waited for him claiming that he was ‘going at a race tempo’. When I read that in his book ‘Every Second Counts’, I just frowned and thought ‘what a jerk.’ Loads of people are going to read that and believe it because it’s Lance Armstrong.Needless to say when I got back home and had my first racing bike brought for me at Christmas it was not Lance who I was imitating out on the roads. I was Jan Ullrich in my enormous gear, which I stayed in for as long as possible on the hard climbs like he did, my mouth opened like a fish when I time trialled just like his was.He more than anyone ignited my dream to one day become a Professional Cyclist.Which is why it’s a shame that Ullrich’s career has ended the way it has, being convicted of drugs that everyone else is on, being ejected from the Tour he was in great shape to win. Most people would take Ullrich’s career and be more than happy.One Tour win, five times runner up, Two time World Champion, Olympic Gold Medallist, Tour of Spain winner, and seven Tour Stages is an impressive palmares. However double that by two and you still haven’t got anywhere close to what this man had the potential to accomplish. It is a shame that he will be remembered for what he lost more than for what he won.What I find fascinating about Ullrich is the person himself. An unbelievable talent who is also unbelievably humble, a man who has never understood his own abilities, never had it in him to fulfil his greatness, it is his human qualities that make him such a fascinating cyclist and a fascinating human being. As Ullrich recently retires, I think fondly of the man who should have been King.