Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich fined for assaulting prostitute

Jan Ullrich, the only German cyclist to have won the Tour de France, has been fined €7,200 (£6,500) for assaulting a prostitute, reports Der Spiegel.

The assault last August, in which Ullrich choked his victim in a five-star hotel room in Frankfurt, resulted in the 45-year-old former T-Mobile and Bianchi rider being admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

Following his arrest, police said he was under the influence of drink and drugs, which were also factors in a number of other incidents involving Ullrich last year.

A week before the incident that led to him being fined, he had appeared in court in Mallorca after being arrested following a fight with his neighbour on the island, the German actor and director Til Schweiger.

He was also reported to have assaulted a 34-year-old man at Hamburg airport last September while travelling to the United States to undergo rehab for his addictions.

The previous year, he was handed a 21-month suspended sentence and fined by a Swiss court for drink-driving.

Ullrich said last year that his dependency on drugs and alcohol resulted from the “despair” he found himself in after breaking up with his wife and being unable to see his three sons.

Winner of the Tour de France in 1997, he finished runner-up in the race on five occasions and won Olympic gold in the road race at Sydney in 2000. He also won the time trial world championship twice.

Ullrich retired in 2007 and four years later was retroactively banned for two years for his involvement in the Operacion Puerto doping ring, with his results annulled from May 2005 onwards. He admitted blood doping in 2013.

Ullrich had previously served a six-month ban in 2002 after testing positive for amphetamines, with the German federation accepting his explanation that he used the drug for recreational purposes rather than to enhance his athletic performance.