A German court also decided that the Team Telekom rider should pay a fine equivalent to two months of his annual salary, which is thought to be around $3.8m.

Ullrich, the Olympic road race champion who won the Tour in 1997, knocked out a rack and several bicycles with his Porsche outside a Freiburg hotel in the early hours of 1 May.

Ullrich fled the scene but was found to have had three times the permitted level of alcohol in his blood when driving.

It has been a tough few weeks for Ullrich, who announced shortly after his driving escapade that he would miss July's Tour de France because of a knee injury.

Ullrich had been the biggest threat to Lance Armstrong's bid to win the Tour for the fourth time.