Editing Jan Ullrich (section)

=== 1996 Tour de France ===
Ullrich gave up a place in the 1996 German Olympic team to ride his first Tour. He finished the prologue 33 seconds down. He stayed within the top 20 until the mountains on stage 7 when [[Miguel Induráin]] cracked. Ullrich finished 30 seconds back, 22 behind his teammate [[Bjarne Riis]] while Indurain finished four minutes down. On the following stage, he finished in the same group as Indurain 40 seconds behind Riis. On stage 9, Riis rode into the yellow jersey as leader of the [[General classification in the Tour de France|general classification]] while Ullrich finished 44 seconds back and also into 5th place overall 1-minute 38 seconds from Riis.

Over the final mountains, Ullrich rode into second place behind Riis, but he conceded time on each mountain stage, eventually being nearly four minutes behind Riis. He won the final [[individual time trial]] and secured his first Tour stage win. He cut 2 minutes 18 seconds into Riis's lead. This led Indurain to comment that Ullrich would win the Tour some day, adding that it was a remarkable victory considering that Ullrich had been helping Riis. Ullrich dismissed suggestions he would have done better if he had not had to help Riis, saying Riis had inspired the team.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/results/archives/tour96/rep20.html |title=Stage 20 Reports |publisher=Cyclingnews |access-date=5 April 2007}}</ref> Jan finished his first tour in second place at 1-minute 41 seconds from his teammate [[Bjarne Riis]].