BERLIN -- Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour de France winner, has admitted for the first time that he received blood-doping treatment from Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes during his career.
Ullrich had previously acknowledged having unspecified "contact" with Fuentes, but went further in an interview with the weekly German magazine Focus published Saturday.
"Yes, I received treatment from Fuentes," the German rider was quoted as saying.
“
Almost everyone took performance-enhancing substances then. I took nothing that the others didn't also take. For me, fraud starts when I gain an advantage. That wasn't the case. I wanted to ensure equality of opportunities.
”
-- Jan Ullrich, in an interview
with German magazine Focus
Asked if he only engaged in blood doping with Fuentes, Ullrich replied that "the doctor's diagnosis says that." He said he couldn't remember how many times he had received treatment from Fuentes.
In February 2012, the Court of Arbitration for Sport banned Ullrich for two years for blood doping.
The CAS ruled that the German was "fully engaged" in Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes' doping program, exposed in the Operation Puerto probe. The court stripped him of his third-place finish at the 2005 Tour. Ullrich retired in 2007.
Ullrich didn't contest the CAS ruling, saying at the time that he wanted to "put an end to the issue."
IOC vice president Thomas Bach said the confession is "too little, too late."
"Jan Ullrich had his chance for a creditable admission a couple of years ago and he missed it," Bach said in an emailed statement. "Today's confirmation of some of the already well known and established facts does not help Jan Ullrich nor cycling."
The head of Germany's cycling union echoed that sentiment.
"He would have done himself and cycling a favor years ago with such a confession," Rudolf Scharping told German news agency dpa. "But this no longer has anything to do with cycling today."
