"I have never doped in my whole career," declared Jan Ullrich in an interview with the Swiss magazine, Blick. He assumes that he will not be banned from riding in the future, because "there is just no reason" for that. He reports that he is back on the bike again, and has no thought of ending his career. "I have always said that I want to end with a Tour win." He claims to already have contact with other teams, but says he cannot accept his firing from T-Mobile, "because as I see it, they have no grounds for the firing."
Were Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla and Rudy Pevenage the only ones to be shown the door? The German rumour mill is working overtime, outlining a palace coup in which the riders are banding together to boot out team manager (and owner) Olaf Ludwig as well as sport-technical director Mario Kummer.
The Tagesspiegel reports that after the suspensions of Ullrich, Sevilla and Pevenage were announced on the Friday before the Tour, "the seven remaining riders withdrew for a joint training ride and to discuss whether they even wanted to ride the Tour. Afterwards, Matthias Kessler, apparently the new strong man on the team, told Olaf Ludwig that the team had decided to ride the Tour, and how it would ride the Tour. 'We want to be in it and we want to win it,' said Kessler. And this was why Ludwig was downgraded to the role of a helper to the team, which pretty much led itself."
Radsport-News.com reports that its "usually well-informed sources" say that the whole team had protested against Kummer before the Tour. And finally, Bild reports that T-Mobile's attorneys and Ullrich's attorneys are scheduled to meet today "to make their positions clear."
