Goodbye Jan

"I will continue my involvement in cycling, but I'm ending my active career as a professional cyclist," Jan Ullrich told reporters Monday.

"I couldn't live without cycling," added the 33-year-old. "It's my passion and my life."

He said he would continue as an advisor to the small Austrian Volksbank cycling team.

Never recovered from doping scandal

After being implicated in an alleged doping scandal, dubbed "Operation Puerto," last year, notably alongside Italian star Ivan Basso, Ullrich was eventually sacked by his T-Mobile team during the race.

The team said at the time that damaging evidence from Spanish investigators in Madrid prompted the decision to drop their star rider.

Ullrich said he never recovered from not being allowed to race the Tour last year.

"My life as a cyclist collapsed that day," added Ullrich, who went on to criticize the people who he said "condemned him before being properly judged."

"I've been painted as a criminal while I've done nothing wrong," he added.

Ullrich worse off than the others

In recent months, none of the riders linked to Operation Puerto -- launched to weed out an alleged doping and blood doping network being run by a Spanish doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes -- have been sanctioned.

While Basso went on to be cleared of all wrongdoing by the Italian authorities, and has since signed for the Discovery Channel team, Ullrich fared less well in his search to resurrect his career.

In Lance's shadow

For many years Ullrich was one of Germany's biggest and most popular sports personalities. He won the Tour de France in 1997, but when he returned in 2000, the German was faced with a new and more determined rival in Lance Armstrong. The American, having conquered cancer, went on to win the race for the next seven years.

Click on the link below to read more about the highlights and lowlights in Jan Ullrich's career as a professional cyclist.