Jan Ullrich’s career was part of this, his first win suggested he’d dominate the Tour, and with it the sport for years to come.

It’s an irony of sort that they were founded the same year when Keul was elected President of the German Association of Sports Physician. I won’t further comment on “The contrast in attitudes towards DDR doping days and pro cycling’s leaden years is striking” because I went some length on it below.The possibility of doping in the DDR days is perhaps more about Ullrich’s upbringing as a child and the person he became, but as suggested above, the danger is ersatz psychology. I thoroughly enjoyed it and it certainly isn’t an assassination piece on the DDR, which, if I understand you correctly is what you’re assuming? I think that if there’s a contrast in attitudes of sort to reflect about is how singling out DDR allows us to “forget” all the time what USADA was doing, or CONI and so on and on. I guess I’d need to read it but frankly from what inrng reports the focus on DDR doping and so on looks laughable at best, especially when speaking of a prominent Telekom athlete. A Wunderkind who won the amateur worlds in 1993 as a teenager and almost won the time trial against the pros there too, he was second in the 1996 Tour de France, taking the final time trial.

Sure, and proud, but in case I could choose I’d always pick as a political model Rojava or Chiapas over DDR or the USSR I got the impression that the author went to great lengths to not make this book an “East Vs West” narrative. Although cases of doping on minors in the DDR were actually reported, the doping angle looks totally misplaced here, especially considering the Keulephant in the Room: Ullrich spent a couple of years in a KJS, at most three, as an early teenager, whereas pretty much his whole pro career happened at Telekom / T-Mobile over more than a decade. This is an institutional level of financial and moral support that I’ve not seen in pro sports whether it’s cycling, tennis, athletics etc, but for many reasons this is not going to happen, because it’s not the state that’s perpetuating it, because some victims because wealthy through it and so on.

As I said previously the author went to great lengths to not just make the book a lazy finger pointing job at the old East. Yet this put him on a pedestal and the move from cheer to adulation, and the risks this brings are well set out in this book. Let’s leave the Keul and Southern (Federal) Germany universities surprise to the readers of the book, then.

The 1997 Tour win is symbolic for a country trying to reunite, easterners could see one of their own winning, westerners can celebrate their gain as the first – and only – German Tour winner, it was an act of unification itself. On a much smaller level the Tour monopolises attention such that when a cycling biography comes out in June, along comes the race with all its distractions.Now the two systems are different in obvious ways that a book review doesn’t need to cover, readers can reflect on this. If you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, having bought the hardback you can feel the heft, it runs well beyond 400 pages with notes and an index and the font isn’t big either. Think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick here, but perhaps I should have explained things better, especially as doping is always a topic that provokes reactions. It’s “the same USADA” (not exactly *the same* of course), covering up doped Olympic medallists or catching Lance. And let me be clear: I consider it fairer to treat people as “we” do with Basso than as it happened with Ullrich.

There’s injury, drink-driving, a doping ban following an out-of-competition test after a nightclub and the slide begins. Well apparently Gabriele is very sensitive about East Germany… As Inrng often says, it gives more informations about you than about the subject when you react so strongly to what is at worst a slightly deflected review of a book you didn’t read.Obviously doping is a key topic but mainly because of the times not solely because he was born in the DDR. If you want I could also name several doped ex-athletes in cycling and beyond who get moral and financial support today… without having ever had any relation with DDR, imagine that. Whereas, as the piece above shows, having been part of the DDR Sport System is enough to start speaking about doping.