In a docuseries coming out in November, the winner of the 1997 Tour talks about his descent into hell in the darkest years of world cycling: “I played with death every day”
Sixteen years after his retirement and a few days before his 50th birthday (December 2), “Kaiser” Jan Ullrich will lay bare in the Prime Video docuseries “Der Gejagte” (“The Hunted”), due out on 28 November: four episodes full of pathos, between secrets and revelations, which will shed some light on the darkness into which cycling was plunged in the 1990s. The German’s confession will concern the victories at the 1997 Tour de France, the 1999 Vuelta a España and the Sydney road test in 2000, but above all the tunnel of drug addiction: excluded from the 2006 Grande Boucle on the eve of the departure due to involvement in the Operación Puerto of the Spanish doctor Fuentes, a year later he was declared guilty of doping by the Court of Arbitration for Sport and all the results obtained after May 2005 were annulled. In 2013 the German finally admitted to having used doping substances.
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the series
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The documentary will tell the story of the “great fall” of five years ago, the hospitalization to fight addiction and the “personal journey to Santiago” of one of the most controversial names in the history of cycling. Ullrich tells a truth made up of nightmares and scars: “At that time, every day was a matter of life and death. I used a lot of cocaine, I drank whiskey as if it were water, until I was close to death” explains the Kaiser. “It would be wrong to say that I have not deceived anyone, but today I made peace with my past. Spectators, fans, ordinary people who will see the documentary will be able to put themselves in my shoes and thinking about this today I feel lighter “.
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