Upon hearing the news of a new round of doping allegations against Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich – finishing up the Tour of Germany – reacted with typical reserve and caution.

Should the allegations turn out to be true, Ullrich said, he would be “very disappointed” in Armstrong, hastily adding, however, that this was not the first time French media have attempted to discredit the seven-time Tour de France winner. Ullrich said he remains skeptical of the allegations outlined in Tuesday’s edition of L’Equipe. While Germany’s top cycling star remained somewhat reticent, one of the country’s biggest newspapers, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, was not. In a commentary published Wednesday Süddeutsche columnist Thomas Kistner challenged Ullrich to take a firmer stand.

“If Ullrich were serious about standing up against doping,” Kistner wrote, “he would sue Lance Armstrong,” for the damage the American has done to the German’s career. After all Armstrong, Kistner implied, has cheated Ullrich out of becoming one of the greatest cyclist of all times, keeping him from winning the Tour five or more times. The paper followed up the commentary with an exploration of the chances a hypothetical case of Ullrich v. Armstrong might have. The first problem, according to the paper, would be to put a price tag on the damage Ullrichs career has taken, if indeed Ullrich had been cheated by Armstrong. Ullrich’s manager Wolfgang Strohband quickly dismissed such speculation.

“This is all very vague, we are not thinking about it,” Strohband told the paper. “It is impossible to put something like that into numbers. Forget it.” The sports marketing expert Klaus Kaercher, manager of the Olympic speed skating champion Anni Friesinger, agreed with Strohband.

“Ullrich was always immensely popular in Germany, despite the fact that he was always second,” Kaercher pointed out.

As a national sports idol his market value has been at the upper end of the spectrum since 1997. Of course, Kaercher added, as a consistent winner, his value would have been even higher. Kaercher added that it was not only Ullrich who is damaged, should it be true that Lance Armstrong’s victories were fraudulent. The damage would be to all of cycling and hence to everyone involved in it.

“The entire sport would be much more marketable if it didn’t have such a dirty image,” Kaercher observed. “Now the sport has yet another affair – and a very spectacular one. For potential sponsors that means cycling means cheating and they will prefer to put their money back into classical advertising in the future.” The fact that everyone in cycling is damaged, according to Kaercher, makes the matter of a civil suit against Armstrong extremely complicated.

“Just who is going to sue whom?” Kaercher asked. “Who is damaged and who is a damager? Where does this end?” For Ullrich, Kaercher concludes, there is not much to be gained by a lawsuit, financially or otherwise. Ullrich’s manager Strohband agreed.

“I am not going to burden myself with a lawsuit,” Strohband says.

So – unlike from France – Armstrong has nothing to fear from Germany.