Marcel Kittel · Biography

Marcel Kittel won his first world title in 2005, when he took the junior time trial at the UCI Road World Championships in Vienna. Born on 11 May 1988 in Arnstadt, Thuringia, the German rider defended that title in 2006 and went on to become a sprinter. Between 2011 and 2017 he won 14 stages of the Tour de France, four at the Giro d’Italia and one at the Vuelta a España. He rode for Skil-Shimano and its successors Argos-Shimano, Giant-Shimano and Giant-Alpecin, then for Etixx-Quick-Step and Katusha-Alpecin, and retired in 2019.

Junior time trial titles and the Thuringian team

Kittel came through as a time triallist. After the junior world title in Vienna in 2005, he won again in 2006 at the championships held in Spa and Ghent, and that same year collected the German junior titles in the individual and team time trials. From 2007 to 2010 he raced for the Thüringer Energie Team, an amateur squad from his home region. He was German under-23 time trial champion in 2007 and 2010, and in 2010 took bronze in the under-23 time trial at the World Championships. Over those seasons his power on flat finishes began to outweigh his work against the clock, and the move towards bunch sprints shaped the rest of his career.

A first professional season with 17 wins

He turned professional in 2011 with the Dutch team Skil-Shimano. His first win came on stage 3 of the Tour de Langkawi, and he finished the year with 17 victories, the second-highest total in the peloton that season. They included the Münsterland Giro and his first Grand Tour stage, stage 7 of the 2011 Vuelta a España. He won the Münsterland Giro again in 2012, by then with the team renamed Argos-Shimano, and that spring he took the Belgian Scheldeprijs for the first time. He won it again in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017, five editions in all.

Yellow in Corsica and Harrogate

The 2013 Tour de France started in Corsica, and Kittel won the opening stage in Bastia to claim the first yellow jersey of his career, which he lost the next day to Jan Bakelants. He added stages 10 and 12 and closed the race by winning on the Champs-Élysées in Paris: four stages in his first Tour. Earlier that season he had won three stages of the Tour of Turkey and the opening stage of the Tour of Oman. In 2014, riding for Giant-Shimano, he followed the same script. Stage 1 into Harrogate put him in yellow again before Vincenzo Nibali took it on stage 2, and he also won stages 3, 4 and 21, the last of them once more in Paris. That May he had won stages 2 and 3 of the Giro d’Italia, in Belfast and Dublin, and in September he took two stages of the Tour of Britain. In 2015 he raced for Giant-Alpecin.

Etixx-Quick-Step and five Tour stages in 2017

Kittel joined the Belgian team Etixx-Quick-Step for 2016. That year he won the Dubai Tour overall, two stages and the points classification at the Volta ao Algarve, the Grand Prix de Fourmies, and stages 2 and 3 of the Giro d’Italia, which put him in the maglia rosa after stage 3. At the Tour de France he won stage 4 into Limoges, and in the autumn he became world team time trial champion with Etixx-Quick-Step. In 2017 he won the Dubai Tour overall again, a stage of the Abu Dhabi Tour and the opening stage of the Tour of California, and in July he took five stages of the Tour de France: 2, 6, 7, 10 and 11. They brought his Tour total to 14 stage wins, and he spent several days that month in the green jersey of the points classification.

Katusha-Alpecin and retirement

For 2018 he signed with Katusha-Alpecin. His only wins that year were stages 2 and 6 of Tirreno-Adriatico, finishing in Follonica and Fano. On 9 May 2019 the team and the rider agreed to end his contract, a decision Kittel put down to fatigue. On 23 August 2019 he announced his retirement from professional cycling.

Broadcasting and sprint coaching

From 2021 he worked as a Tour de France analyst for the Dutch broadcaster NOS. On 22 November 2025 Unibet Rose Rockets, formerly Unibet Tietema Rockets, named him their sprint coach, working alongside the sprinter Dylan Groenewegen. His first race in the team car was the Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana in January 2026, which Groenewegen won in Valencia.