Ullrich in trouble for cycle crash

The Olympic champion Jan Ullrich's troubled start to the season took a turn for the worse yesterday when it was confirmed that police had confiscated his driving licence after a late-night incident in the centre of Freiburg during the week.

Ullrich's manager Wolfgang Strohband admitted that his protege had drunk several glasses of wine before driving his Porsche 911 into a railing, damaging several parked bicycles. Ullrich then drove off but a witness to the incident took the number of his car and informed the police, who took a blood sample from him.

"We don't know yet if charges will follow as we haven't had the police report," Telekom's spokesman Luc Eisenga told the Guardian yesterday. "But the team aren't happy with this as it was the middle of the night and alcohol was involved. It is not professional behaviour."

According to a German newspaper the Olympic silver medallist Alexandre Vinok ourov was with Ullrich in the car. Eisenga, however, maintains this is untrue.

Strohband put the incident down to Ullrich's frustration at the knee injury which has sidelined him since early February. He has only recently resumed training and is not expected to race until May 22, which will leave him only six weeks to prepare to tackle Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France.

Ullrich, who won the Tour in 1997, wrote on the Telekom website: "I really did something stupid."

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