Jan Ullrich gets out of the saddle.

Legs twirl, gaze forward.

Then it appears in close-up: the young face with the freckles and the dangling earring on the left earlobe, which in the late 1990s became the projection screen for the expectations of an entire country.

These are pictures from better days, and a reporter's question from the off fits in with this: Who is going to hit this man?

25 years after Ullrich's victory in the 1997 Tour de France, the Germans have long known the answer.

Ullrich hit himself.

Because he couldn't deal with what hits someone who wins the tour - as the only German to date.

The five-part documentary about him, which Saarländische Rundfunk and NDR produced, shows this again clearly.

David Lindenfeld

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The authors Uli Fritz, Ole Zeisler and Moritz Cassalette spoke to many companions for "Being Jan Ullrich" and the audio podcast "Jan Ullrich - Held auf Zeit", including Ullrich's first coach Peter Becker, former managers and supervisors, journalists and friends .

And the producers dug up a lot of footage from the past.

This combination works so well that you want to watch or listen to all the episodes one after the other.

What is mainly due to Ullrich: his life as a man of extremes, his fame, doping, the scandals, the love and the reluctance that hit him.

And equally to those who are partly responsible for it and those who are trying to restore it.

It is also due to the conception of the documentation: critical,

It's just unclear how it will turn out.

Ullrich is currently stable, "keeps to his specifications and looks good.

But there is still a long way to go,” says Lance Armstrong.

He was Ullrich's great rival.

Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times before, like the German and so many others in cycling, he was convicted of doping abuse.

He was stripped of all seven titles.

"He was tied to the bed.

unconscious"

In the meantime, however, the former opponent seems to be more for Ullrich than that. It was often read that he wants to help Ullrich get back on his feet.

In the documentary, Armstrong tells how he visited the then addicted Ullrich in a clinic a few years ago: "I saw a man in a place like no human being before.

We all know some crazy friends.

But I had never seen anyone in such a condition.” Another time, he flew to a Mexican clinic after Ullrich was expelled from the plane in Cancún on a flight to Cuba.

"He was tied to the bed.

Without consciousness.

It was the worst of all.”

Armstrong speaking in front of the camera in Aspen, Colorado is important to this film.

Because he - who has fallen deeply himself, but is now back in life - can tell something about the broken man who recently made the headlines mainly with disturbing videos and his alcohol and drug problems.

And because one without the other – and vice versa – would probably not exist in the form it has today.

Armstrong says Ullrich was the only one who scared him.

"He made me get up early.

He changed my life.

He had more talent.” What he doesn't say: Ullrich also drove him on the way to becoming the most unscrupulous doper in cycling history.