The Best There Never Was

This episode of The Cycling Podcast features Daniel Friebe and Lionel Birnie talking about Daniel’s biography of the German cyclist Jan Ullrich.

Recorded over a glass of wine on the Giro d’Italia’s rest day in Abruzzo, Lionel starts by asking why Daniel wanted to write about the 1997 Tour de France champion.

In a way it’s a classic tale of partially fulfilled talent – Ullrich burst onto the scene in 1996, finishing second in the Tour de France behind his Telekom teammate Bjarne Riis. The following year, while still aged only 23, Ullrich won the Tour by nine minutes. Cycling looked set for an era of total domination by the German.

But it didn’t work out like that as Ullrich’s vulnerability was exposed partly by the pressure of being the focal point of an entire nation’s cycling hopes and dreams. Lance Armstrong came back from cancer and won the Tour seven years in a row and Ullrich was regularly his closest challenger.

Then, after Armstrong’s retirement in 2005, Ullrich looked set to inherit the crown – until he was revealed to be a client of the blood doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.

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