This feature appeared in the December issue of Procycling.
With 14 victories to his name, Marcel Kittel was the joint most prolific race winner of 2017. A dominant five-stage haul at the Tour de France in July put him on top at the biggest stage of all, and showcased again how formidable he is when the road is flat. Procycling met the German sprinter at home to reflect on the season and find out what is still to come.
My first realisation that Marcel Kittel was terrifying for other sprinters came during the 2013 Tour de France. It wasn’t the four stage wins but his defeat in Saint-Amand-Montrond which was telling. His team, Argos-Shimano, had been done over in the crosswinds by a coalition of sprint teams and GC teams wanting to distance, respectively, Kittel and Alejandro Valverde. Never has so much common cause been found in a Tour stage between teams with such vastly differing goals – Omega Pharma, Cannondale, Belkin and Saxo Bank sent their men to the front, and the gap grew and grew.
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I waited at the Argos team bus after the stage had finished. Mark Cavendish had won the stage a clear 10 minutes before Kittel came in, but defeat is sometimes more interesting than victory, and I wanted to see how Kittel dealt with it. He arrived, his face streaked with sweat and dirt and his team kit grey with windblown dust. “I think they don’t want to sprint against me,” he said, without the slightest hint of disappointment.
Maybe he knew that he’d have another chance, which would come in Paris. Maybe three wins so far, two in the previous three stages, had already made his Tour as successful as it needed be. Admittedly, Kittel had had 100 kilometres to get used to the idea that he wasn’t going to win that day, but I’ve watched other sprinters deal with defeat and it has been different - generally denial or anger. Cavendish, to take an easy example, hates getting beaten, though he’s made a grudging peace with it these days even if he doesn’t like it. Robbie Hunter was so pissed off at getting beaten in one Tour stage in 2007 that he lifted his front wheel off the ground and bashed it down again, accompanied by a loud yell. Riders banging their handlebars with their fists is common. Kittel, on the other hand, was fine, as cool and calm in defeat as he often is in victory, which suggests to me that the coolness and calmness is ingrained.
The two things I learned in Saint-Amand-Montrond were that first, Kittel’s rivals had done everything in their power to stop him from sprinting against them, because they were scared. And second, that Kittel knew it.
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