Banned cyclist says Armstrong should get Tour wins reinstated

Berlin • Lance Armstrong should have his seven Tour de France victories reinstated because of the prevalence of doping at the time, former cyclist Jan Ullrich said.

"I would give Armstrong the Tour victories back. ... That's how it was back then," Ullrich told the current edition of Sport Bild magazine. "It doesn't help anyone to draw a line through the winners' list."

Ullrich, who won the Tour in 1997, finished second to Armstrong three times — in 2000, 2001 and 2003 — but the German declined to stake a claim for his former rival's stripped titles.

"I only want victories that I've experienced on the bike. I don't want to win anything at the green table," he said.

Armstrong, the dominant cyclist of his generation, acknowledged in January that he doped for all seven of his Tour wins from 1999-2005. He was subsequently stripped of the titles.

Ullrich admitted to Focus magazine in June that he received blood treatments from Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes.

"But I'd said that already a thousand times. There was nothing new in that," said Ullrich, who was stripped of third place in the 2005 Tour and banned for two years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in February 2012.