Athletes die twice, so the adage goes, the first time on retiring. It can be a curious kind of an afterlife, mind, particularly in professional cycling. Some erstwhile denizens of the peloton remain tightly involved in the sport, as managers, mechanics or media pundits. Still more linger around the fringes, lining out at a sportive here, shilling for a sponsor there, never quite cutting the ties completely.
Others seek careers elsewhere, but few, it seems, leave cycling altogether.
Even Riccardo Riccò, banned until 2024, and Danilo Di Luca, banned for life, enjoy posthumous existences as outlaws of the cycling world. Two years ago, Riccò set himself the quixotic – and ultimately aborted – task of breaking record times on a series of climbs, including Mont Ventoux. Di Luca continues to market his own brand of bicycles and published a memoir ahead of this year's Giro d'Italia.
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When Operacion Puerto abruptly pulled the shutters down on Jan Ullrich's career on the eve of the 2006 Tour de France, it initially seemed as though the German might become that rarity – a professional bike rider cast definitively into the wilderness as a result of a doping infraction.
That summer, faced with evidence that he had received blood transfusions from Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, Ullrich issued the unconvincing denials that are seemingly expected of a man in such a position, but largely retreated to his home on the Swiss side of Lake Constance thereafter.
Ullrich would remain cloistered there, at least as far as the cycling world was concerned, for the years following the formal announcement of his retirement in February 2007. As each fresh scandal emerged – Michael Rasmussen's whereabouts, the CERA positives, Lance Armstrong's contentious comeback – Ullrich seemed to recede further into the background. He chose silence, even as those in his homeland prodded for an admission of guilt.
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