Jan Ullrich opens his own cycling museum in Germany: "I have been dreaming of this for a long time"

Jan Ullrich is to open his own cycling museum this Friday, in his home Black Forest region of Germany. Since certain events six years ago when the 1997 Tour de France winner hit rock bottom, the German cycling icon has been on a self-healing path to restore his life and repay his debt to the cycling world.

The Jan Ullrich Cycling Museum's tagline – 'Wo täglich neue kraft wachsen' (where new strength grows every day), suggests a step forward for the 50-year-old, as he opens the new project in Bad Durrheim.

"I have been dreaming of this museum for a long time," Ullrich told Belgian outlet Het Laatste Nieuws. "Not only to highlight my own career, but especially to promote cycling. But setting up a museum requires a lot of time and energy and is certainly not easy."

On Monday Ullrich was in Roeselare, Belgium, visiting the Koers Museum of Cycling, where he procured a particularly significant piece for his new venture – the Bianche time trial bike on which he beat Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour de France, the only time he did so. "That bike is really a piece of cycling history," said Ulrich. "It's fantastic that we can borrow it and yes, it is the original. We checked that."