Luke Rowe claims he 'made life hell' for dopers in peloton
Luke Rowe has claimed that he used to “make life hell” in the peloton for riders who returned following doping bans. The Decathlon-AG2R directeur sportif made the claim in an episode of the Watts Occurring podcast he co-hosts with former Ineos teammate Geraint Thomas.
In a discussion of riders they had disliked in the peloton, Rowe said that he had looked to “flick” doped riders who returned to racing after suspensions.
“People who had been positive and came back to the sport, I would just ride through them and go out of my way to do it,” Rowe said.
“If it’s black and white and you’ve been done for something and they’re next to me, I’m just going to ride through them. I don’t understand why every rider didn’t do this because then it would make their life hell, because they don’t deserve to come back in my mind.”
Rowe didn’t name any specific riders, nor did he outline his specific actions against them, but he said that those in question would never hit back against his behaviour because “they know they hadn’t got a leg to stand on.” He continued to say that returning dopers should have been “bullied” out of the sport.
“That’s probably the only category of rider where I was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck about them. You’ve cheated me. You've cheated the sport. Fuck you,’” he said.
“Imagine if every rider had the same mentality. Imagine you got caught for drugs, you’re a cheating scumbag, you come back to the sport, you’re on the start line with 160 riders, and all of them treat you like shit, which is all you deserve. You wouldn’t want to be in that peloton for long. You could just bully them out the sport. Back to where they belong.”
Rowe turned professional with Team Sky in 2012 and stayed with the squad – later to become Ineos – until he hung up his wheels at the end of 2024. He opted to join Decathlon as a directeur sportif for 2025, and he also appears occasionally as a pundit on TNT Sports.
During his time at Sky, Rowe was among those to publicly support manager Dave Brailsford in 2017 when his position was called into question after UK Anti-Doping opened an inquiry into accusations of possible wrongdoing at Team Sky and British Cycling.
In an episode of the Watts Occurring podcast in 2024, Rowe described Nairo Quintana as a “rat” following his return to cycling after his positive test for Tramadol, though the episode was later edited to remove the reference.
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