Generation Jan Ullrich – Tour de France 1997
I know him, but he doesn’t know me. We grew up at the same time and are nearly the same age. He is a star and I am a nobody. This is a very common sentence when we see all these famous people on television, in the movies or in sports competition broadcasts. But in my case it was a little bit different, more complex, tragic and maybe even a little bit touching. In our early youth Jan and I met for the first time. My mother is quite scared of nearly everything. I can’t remember how often we were screamed at when we just stood kneedeep in the Baltic Sea, how often she instructed us – up until adult…