Filled with drama, Ullrich would get the closest of anyone to Armstrong over his long reign and in Paris, just 0:01:01. The enduring question, whether Ullrich's decision to wait for Armstrong on Stage 15 after the American was brought to the ground by a spectator's souvenir cost him the Tour? At the beginning of the day, Ullrich trailed Armstrong by just 15 seconds.
"If I would have won this race by taking advantage of someone's bad luck, then the race was not worth winning," he said before Stage 16 having lost 52 seconds to Armstrong following the decision to wait. Excerpt by Jane Aubrey
Jan Ullrich – more than the sum of the parts. Remarkably talented, and one of the best cyclists of his generation. He became Germany's first ever winner of the Tour de France.
Ullrich grew up in East Germany and, from the moment he won the 1993 world amateur road race title at the age of 19, it was clear that he was a phenomenon. He seemed to confirm that in 1996 when, in his first Tour, he finished second. The following year he won and most predicted he would go on to dominate for the next decade.
The Kaiser, Jan Ullrich in amazing form. My favourite, an underdog for being the most human, truly the antecedant ... On Twitter, Jonathan Vaughters, who raced during the same era, spoke for many when he applauded Ullrich for accepting the CAS ruling: “Hats off to Ullrich for taking a pragmatic stance. He was a huge talent caught in an era with an unbeatable drug. Not more, not less.”