Special Guest 2025 - Jan Ullrich
THE CENTURY OF TALENT. JAN ULLRICH.
A guest at ABENTEUER & ALLRAD on Sunday, 22 June 2025
He is regarded as one of the greatest athletes the country has ever produced. Jan Ullrich was the first and so far only German cyclist to triumph in the Tour de France in 1997. At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, he won the gold medal in the road race and the silver medal in the individual time trial. He won the Vuelta a Espana in 1999 and was twice world champion in the individual time trial.
Blessed with incredible talent, Jan Ullrich was able to attract attention at a young age. This was followed by numerous victories among the amateurs, including the world championship title in Oslo in 1993. After these successes, he was signed by Team Telekom and rode his first Tour de France in 1996, finishing second overall at his first attempt.
Then, on 15 July 1997, came the day that would change the German cycling world forever: The mountain stage up to Andorra-Aracalis. With his solo victory, Jan Ullrich laid the foundation for his later Tour de France success. He took the yellow jersey and triumphed twelve days later in Paris at the age of 23 as the first and so far only German overall winner of the Tour de France.
He thus went down in the history of cycling and sparked a cycling euphoria in Germany comparable at most to Boris Becker's first Wimbledon triumph in 1985 or winning the first football World Cup in Bern in 1954. From then on, millions of Germans followed the cycling broadcasts on their television screens. Germany had become a cycling nation.
After he was beaten by the Italian Marco Pantani in the 1998 Tour de France, his great rivalry with Lance Armstrong from the USA began in 2000. However, Ullrich was no longer able to win the Tour de France, which he finished in second place a total of five times, although he came very close to overall victory once again in 2003 and only narrowly lost out to Armstrong due to a crash in the individual time trial.
Then, in 2006, came the deep fall. Due to his involvement in the Spanish doping scandal ‘Fuentes’, Jan Ullrich was excluded from the Tour de France and his contract with T-Mobile was cancelled. The following year, he ended his career as an athlete and, after years of proceedings, was found guilty of doping by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in 2012. This was followed by a serious personal life crisis with a complete crash on Mallorca. But the fighter Jan Ullrich would never have become the exceptional athlete he once was if he had not managed to fight his way back into life.
In a four-part film documentary ‘JAN ULLRICH - Der Gejagte’ (JAN ULLRICH - The Hunted), which can be seen on AmazonPrime and in the ARD media library, Jan Ullrich talks in detail about his extraordinary life, his successes, his mistakes, his coming to terms with the past and his personal pilgrimage back to life.
Today, he runs cycling camps for amateur cyclists and, as a cycling legend, is a popular expert on TV cycling programmes. Jan Ullrich is also a testimonial for numerous sponsors and brand partners.
Jan Ullrich will talk about his life on stage at ABENTEUER & ALLRAD and will then be available for questions from the public, selfies and autograph requests.