‘Paris smells different. Especially the Champs Élysées’ – Kittel on sprinting in the Tour and the changing era for sprinters

Kittel remembers the Tour differently from the version we see today. “When I was racing, we had eight or ten real chances,” he said. “Now you end up with maybe four.” For him, that shift is not evolution but erosion, a slow shrinking of the space sprinters once had in the biggest race of the year.

He becomes animated when he talks about flat stages and the expectation that sprinters must create drama out of nothing. “It is the parcours that really makes the race exciting or not,” he said in the Domestique Hotseat podcast. 

“If a stage is dead flat, you cannot expect a miracle just because sprinters are there.” He finds it unfair that organisers publicly urge sprinter teams to animate the race while designing routes that give them little to work with.

It is a point he repeats: the expectations on sprinters do not match the routes they are asked to race. “If it is that hard and those flat days are the ones where you want or have to rest as a peloton, then it is logical what happens there.”

The emotional weight shows when Paris comes up. The Champs Élysées sprint was more than the final day. It was the payoff for weeks of suffering. “A big tradition is gone,” he said, and his tone made clear how personal that loss feels. 

Kittel speaks from a place few riders ever reach. Across his career, he collected 89 professional victories, including 14 stage wins in the Tour de France, four in the Giro d’Italia and one in the Vuelta a España. He won on the Champs Élysées twice. That experience shapes the way he looks at the changes.

He accepts that the Tour wants innovation, but he also sees what is disappearing. “You suffer through the mountains for that one chance. Now even that one is gone.”

For Kittel, the loss of Paris is not theoretical. It is rooted in the sensations he still remembers from entering the city as a contender. “I have always found it very amazing if you enter Paris and then you enter the Champs Élysées and you pass for the first time the finish line and all the excited fans there,” he said. 

“They are yelling, they are happy to see the whole peloton, and it is straight away a feeling that a very important moment starts.” That mix of tension and celebration defined the final hour. “You made it to Paris, you can show yourself one more time,” he said. “It is the perfect place for a showdown.” 

He even recalls the way the city felt. “Paris smells different. Especially the Champs Élysées. You smell food and perfume. It is very different from all the other sprint finishes in the Tour de France.”

He also recognises how much is asked of the sprinters who line up now and believes they deserve credit for adapting to a harsher landscape. “The trend is going to more diverse sprinters. The new generation of pure sprinters has to be able to climb a bit better than my generation. ,” he said. 

The competition is fiercer, and every chance matters more because there are fewer of them. “Every team has a sprinter now, and every sprint is harder than before,” he said. “Every opportunity has to be used 200 percent now.”

Across the conversation, he returns to the same idea. The Tour is chasing spectacle, but spectacle was never only about mountain battles. Sprinters gave the race shape and contrast. Their stages were breathers for some riders and last chances for others. “It is part of what makes the Tour the Tour,” he said. 

He is not asking for the old days. He is asking the sport to realise what it stands to lose.

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