‘Cycling is not clean. Absolutely not' - Marcel Kittel urges realism

Kittel turned professional at a time when the fallout from the doping years still hung over the sport. “When I turned professional, then all these doping revelations, they were already made and everyone knew about the widespread systematic doping in teams, especially in the 90s and the 2000s years,” he said. 

The atmosphere in Germany was particularly tense. “There were already like a lot of disappointed fans who were yelling at us, spitting at us. And I was there as a youth rider, like, what’s going on? What does this have to do with me?”

What followed, he believes, was a necessary reckoning. “I think it was not a black eye. I think that actually took a leg off of the body of cycling… because it will never go away. It will always be there as a topic.” Still, he sees value in what the sport was forced to confront. “I absolutely think this was necessary. It gave the opportunity to talk about it and really to analyse where this came from.”

Despite the progress since those years, Kittel is adamant that the sport cannot pretend the issue belongs to the past. “I don’t believe that cycling is clean now. Absolutely not. You would be very ignorant about the facts,” he said in the Domestique Hotseat podcast. 

“There will always be people who are trying to cheat the system. We just have to be sure that we really safeguard what we have and the progress that we made and make sure that these are single cases and not a widespread doping system that we had in the 90s.”

Recent scandals give weight to that concern, and Kittel points to the pressures and incentives that can lead individual riders astray. “Look at the budgets, how they have gone up, the salaries that riders can earn.” he said. 

“There are riders who see an opportunity and who see also an opportunity not to cheat someone, but to end up with a better life. And I think that is also a fact. It is probably in the first instance very human.”

Kittel is equally clear about the role of fans and journalists. He does not believe supporters should become investigators. “It is not up to the fans to make sure that the system works. Other people have to do that job,” he said. 

But he also sees value in public skepticism. “Journalists and fans absolutely have a right to say if they feel like, I am not sure if I can trust it. Then we should see this as a sign, okay, we have to check in and make sure this is really a valid result and we can really trust it.”

At the same time, he warns against assuming that every exceptional performance is suspicious. “I do feel like this is very exceptional. But we also underestimate sometimes where it comes from,” he said. 

“People are doing amazing things on the bike. Because the periodisation of the training and racing planning, everything around it, the innovation, it all just comes into place on that day.”

That does not mean abandoning vigilance. It means understanding the difference between brilliance and deceit. “The ups and downs are not a bad thing. They can be a good thing. They have everything timed perfectly to that one moment and they are world class and even above,” he said. 

“We could be less strict sometimes and there should also be the moment to celebrate the talent. But yeah, do not be naive.”

Kittel’s view is shaped by having lived on both sides of cycling’s transformation: the tail end of the old world and the rise of a new, data driven generation. His conclusion is simple but decisive. The sport is better than it was. It is not safe from its past. And it will only stay clean if it keeps looking itself in the mirror.

Watch the full episode with Marcel Kittel in the Domestique Hotseat 👇