ULLRICH TO GET HIS WAGES FROM TEAM COAST

A German court has decreed that Jan Ullrich is to receive nearly 300,000 pounds in unpaid salary from the former Coast squad, his team for three months during 2003.

Coast had withheld the salary because the former team manager Guenther Dahms believed Ullrich had been doping at that time.

But when the case was heard in court on Wednesday, according to news agency AP, the winner of the 1997 Tour de France stated that he had never used banned drugs whilst riding for Coast.

The court then decided that Ullrich, now 35, should be paid almost 300,000 pounds in unpaid wages from the brief period he was in the team.

Ironically enough, Ullrich only joined Coast after his previous team, T-Mobile suspended him in 2002 because he had failed an out-of-race test for amphetamines and was banned for six months.

Coast pulled out of the sport in the spring of 2003 and were replaced at the last minute by Bianchi - and Ullrich rode his best ever Tour since 1997, finally finishing a close second behind Lance Armstrong.

The German then returned to T-Mobile in 2004, but was suspended by the team in July 2006, just hours before the Tour de France started, because he had been linked to the anti-doping investigation Operacion Puerto.

Ullrich was later sacked and retired early in 2007. Shortly afterwards several of his former team-mates from Telekom, including 1996 Tour de France winner, Bjarne Riis, admitted to doping in the 1990s. But Ullrich continued, and continues, to insist he has never used banned drugs.

RELATED LINKS

Ullrich buys his way out of trouble

DNA tests confirm Ullrich link with Operacion Puerto

T-Mobile sack Ullrich and Sevilla

More Jan Ullrich stories on www.cyclingweekly.com