They say bad luck comes in threes – and so after the recent doping rulings of Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador came another much-belated decision involving Jan Ullrich.

If anyone’s case highlighted the complexities of the doping dilemma that has hamstrung cycling in past years, it is that of Ullrich.

Second-place in his debut Tour de France in 1996, Ullrich blitzed the 1997 Tour to become Germany’s first ever winner of the Grande Boucle and, at 23, the fourth youngest champion in half a century.

Already a year earlier there had been talks of an approaching Ullrich era, with outgoing five-time champion Miguel Indurain predicting a decade of dominance from the freckled youngster.

Instead, what followed was the celebrated era of Lance Armstrong, during which Ullrich picked up more second-places in the Tour than Andy Schleck and Cadel Evans combined.

In his pomp, Ullrich was a thrill to watch. Rarely out of the saddle, the German was a true juggernaut, combining the time trial ability of Fabian Cancellara with the climbing skills of Big Mig.

When the roads went up, Ullrich would display one of the peloton’s finest poker faces – set at a default grimace regardless of whether he was struggling or, as was so often the case, taking things in his stride (by which I mean, taking the inside, steeper line on every tight bend and shedding his rivals like confetti).

The Centennial Tour in 2003 – played out during a balmy European heatwave while I was living in Bordeaux as a student – saw Bianchi blue Ullrich give Armstrong the biggest fright of his seven-year winning streak: the American won by just 61 seconds.

Ullrich’s slowing down after his rival was floored by a young spectator on the Tourmalet provided the moment of the race – while the German’s own fall during the sodden final ITT was synonymous of his never-say-die attitude.

But enough reminiscing about the past – for it’s simply going down the same well-trodden road as the UCI in its ridiculous quest to continue digging up demons from an era long-gone.

Quite what the world cycling body is doing wasting its efforts on confirming the worst kept secret since Richard Virenque finally admitted his part in the Festina affair is anyone’s guess. Surely persecuting one man for essentially going about his job in the same manner as everyone else around him is clutching at straws.

The retroactive two-year ban from professional cycling will not bother a man who retired from the sport almost six years ago, and while I doubt Ullrich will be too put out either by losing his third place in the 2005 Tour (he only collected 2nds after all), it’s a complete farce to promote to the podium the Spaniard Francisco Mancebo, a rider who himself was implicated in the same Operacion Puerto that hounded both him and Ullrich out of the sport a year later.

In fact, with the exception of two riders (including seventh-place Evans) the top 10 in the 2005 Tour reads like a doping compendium from the era of that unbeatable (in all the senses) super drug, EPO.

As many commentators have already concluded of that time in the peloton: it was not Jan Ullrich who was the problem.

In fact, Ullrich has acquitted himself really quite well from the situation, to the extent that he almost seems to smell of roses the same colour as the pink Telecom jersey he used to wear while riding as a pro.

Instead of denying his role in cheating the system (as so many other riders have done and continue to do so), Ullrich put up his hands and basically said, “yes, I did it, I’m glad I’ve been caught, I regret it and I am very sorry”.

He said he had, at the time, been advised by his lawyers to keep his mouth shut, but now that he had been found guilty by CAS it was a big weight off his shoulders and he hoped to draw a line under the whole situation, which was “unsatisfactory for all concerned for myself as for the public”.

Of course, it goes without saying that Ullrich, however decent, is certainly very naïve to think that anyone will believe that he only turned to Dr Fuentes in 2005 in a moment of weakness in a bid to return to those halcyon highs of his earlier career – but as pretty much everyone agrees, at no point in Ullrich’s time in the peloton was he in all likelihood doing anything more dastardly then the person on either side of him in the GC.

What Ullrich’s case proves is that dopers are not all despicable, heinous, spiteful, mendacious fiends who would sell their own mother just to get a hit of Pot Belge (Ullrich, incidentally, had a curiously close relationship with his ‘mutter’, who kissed him repetitively on the mouth after he rode into Paris in yellow in 1997).

If all of cycling’s dopers were as despicable as, say, Riccardo Ricco, there would be no grey area whatsoever; no conception of the idea that riders can be decent human beings and still get caught up in something as morally dubious as doping.

I would go as far as to say that doping during Ullrich’s era was merely a dynamic of the sport – as much as diving is today in soccer. And as much as we all hate footballers who cheat referees into winning penalties and free-kicks, no one would expect the likes of Sergio Busquets and Cristiano Ronaldo being pursued and punished by FIFA years after their retirement.

Ullrich may have been one of the many benefactors of the EPO era, but he was also one of its victims.

As convicted doper Joe Papp (a man whose life was more thoroughly ravaged by doping than his German counterpart) reminded me this week: “You can be a nice, normal, good person and still make decisions that reflect badly upon you, but still do so without losing your essential goodness or humanity.”

Papp rightly says that the authorities should move on and concentrate on “fighting doping in real time, not persecutive those unlucky few who were both its practitioners and victims”.

Why go after Ullrich and ignore the others? By all means, throw Jan the book if you’re going to round up the rest of the cosy cabal – but we all know that’s not going to happen (the jails aren’t big enough, for starters).

Unlike many former convicted dopers – Ullrich’s mentor at Telecom, Bjarne Riis, for example – Ullrich is not trying to make a living from cycling any more. He has no interest in being a directeur sportif or to coach professionals. He rides for the enjoyment of riding and he only seeks to be involved in cycling through what he can offer others.

So banning him from riding amateur cyclo-sportives in German with his fans is taking things way too far. “I think it’s persecution and overkill – it’s not enforcing some worthwhile sanction,” says Papp.

“Why can’t the public enjoy the beauty of the spectacle of such a natural and talented athlete who never left behind his essential humanness to become a robotic machine or extraterrestrial, unlike some of his competitors…” concluded Papp in an email to me this week, clearly alluding to the man whose case was dropped by the US Federal Court a fortnight ago, kicking off these crazy 14 days of dragging the sport through the doping dirt.

(It was alleged this week, incidentally, that Armstrong refused to race in a half ironman unless he was assured the top three finishers would not be tested at the finish; the Texan finished second.)

This, I sincerely hope, will be my last piece on doping for a while. Now the dust seems to have settled, like Jan Ullrich I wish to draw a line under it all and move on.

The season is finally underway and it’s shaping up nicely, what with Andre Greipel in supreme form, a resurgent Tom Boonen looking like he could be back to his best for the Belgian classics, and Mark Cavendish netting the earliest wins for a world champion in six years (despite a nasty spill in Qatar).

Let’s hope next week we can talk about events on the bike rather than the contents of a syringe, blood bag or veal escalope.