Jan Ullrich: The Best There Never Was by Daniel Friebe

Author:Daniel Friebe [Friebe, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Sports, Sports & Recreation, Cycling, Cultural & Social Aspects
ISBN: 9781509801565
Google: OX3FCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2022-06-09T20:27:53+00:00

16

REBOOT, REINVENTION

‘He does the strict minimum until he starts to realize that it’s working, and then this kind of euphoria kicks in’

—Raphael Schweda

It didn’t take a handshake, a smile and ‘a welcome back’ from Lance Armstrong at the Circuit de la Sarthe in north-west France the first week of April for Jan Ullrich to finally feel like a cyclist again. At his Team Coast unveiling in Essen in mid-January, Ullrich had surprised some of the assembled journalists with his slenderness after so many months off the bike. Gone, apparently, were the days when, according to his old teammate Brian Holm, the Telekom riders would have official photos taken for supporter autograph cards in November or December, and Ullrich would put his shoot off until the spring because, says Holm, ‘He looked like a fucking Christmas turkey – and he hated being heavy.’ Gone, too, were the wardrobe malfunctions – perhaps the effect of signing for a team sponsored by a fashion brand: this time Ullrich did not take off his black jacket, so there would be no snarky remarks in the papers about sweat patches under his arms.

There would be enough perspiration over the next few weeks, for better and for worse, on and off the bike. Ullrich spent much of February in Tuscany with Tobias Steinhauser, following Luigi Cecchini’s training plans and sometimes Cecchini himself on the back of his Vespa. His right knee occasionally still swelled after long rides and Ullrich didn’t want to take any chances. Consequently, for once, he stuck to small gears and high cadences. Progress was relatively slow until mid-March, when suddenly Steinhauser experienced something like what Rolf Aldag had seen in the Black Forest in the late spring of 1995: from one day to the next, Ullrich suddenly seemed to burst from his chrysalis and take flight. ‘I had to be careful then that he didn’t finish me off,’ Steinhauser reported later. Before packing him off for his comeback race, Luigi Cecchini decided that it was time for his truth serum – the timed ascent of Monte Serra from Buti. Ullrich stopped the clock at just under sixteen minutes, the best time Cecchini had ever seen – ‘plus he was still overweight,’ Cecchini notes.

Throughout the spring, Ullrich had kept his focus while Günther Dahms, his new boss, seemed to be losing control. Coast’s Spanish riders were still arguing with Dahms about their German taxes, and Dahms had also failed in his search for a second sponsor. Riders complained publicly about wages arriving late or not at all, and in the first week of March the UCI suspended Team Coast’s licence to compete. Two weeks later, on the eve of Milan–Sanremo and three days before the end of Jan Ullrich’s doping ban, the licence was restored – unlike most people’s faith in the future of Dahms’s project.

Ullrich and Tobias Steinhauser set off for the Circuit de la Sarthe on 6 April unsure of whether they would even be allowed to start the race. As

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