The Bigger They Are...

After a short, winless Tour and a public dressing down from his DS, John  Woodhouse asks ‘what’s next for Marcel Kittel?’

- John  Woodhouse

“ I don’t want to sound pessimistic but the next days are very, very hard and nobody should take it for granted that Paris is already around and it can happen very quickly that you’re not on the race any more.”

Looking back, Marcel Kittel’s words on the rest day in Albertville ahead of the Alps look somewhat prophetic, a clear warning of what was to come two days later when he missed the time cut on stage 10 to La Rosière. While no sprinters made it through the Alps, the Marcel Kittel of 2018 was never the same as the five-stage winning machine of 2017. Frustrated, angry, lost in despair at a race of failure — the only time Kittel made a splash in the French press was before stage eight when Katusha directeur sportif Dimitri Konyshev branded his star rider “egotistical”, complaining that the money spent had produced little more than a boy-man who played pointedly with his mobile phone during pre-stage meetings.

Behind the scenes in the Katusha- Alpecin camp, the scene was slightly different. Kittel is slumped in a ‘loungie’ at the rear of a hotel, happily having pictures taken with suitably wowed passers-by. He chats happily with a German couple delighted by his presence.

“I’m sure you have better things to do than pose for photographs with us,” they tell him. “It’s fine ” he replies. “Why are you here? Where are you from?”

At the start of the year, it looked like Kittel was set to repeat his domination of the 2017 Tour, where he took five stages for Quick Step, in so doing becoming one of cycling’s most in-demand figures.