Marcel Wüst

Marcel Wüst (born 6 August 1967) is a German former road bicycle racer. He won stages in all of the three Grand Tours; twelve stages in the Vuelta a España, one stage in the Tour de France and a stage in the Giro d'Italia.

In 2000, a crash left him without sight in one eye and prematurely ended his professional career. In 2002 and 2003, Wüst worked as a team manager for Team Coast. He also had a career as an analyst in broadcasting until 2008.

Early life and family
Wüst was born in Cologne. He got his first taste for cycling when his family visited the 1973 Tour de France during vacation in France. He received his first racing bike at the age of ten, in 1977, before joining the local cycling club a year later. In 1984, Wüst won the opening stage of a stage race in Luxembourg. Three years later, he and fellow Cologne-based cyclist Heike Gasel became a couple. They married in January 1990. The two have a son, Alexander, who was born in 1998. Wüst spends three months a year in his elected second home, Noosa, Australia, while remaining a resident of his native Cologne.

Cycling career
In mid-1988, Wüst turned professional with the French RMO team, taking part in that year's edition of Paris–Tours, where he won the first intermediate sprint. His first victory in the professional field came at the Ronde des Pyrenees in 1989. In 1990, he won three races and took part in his first Grand Tour, the Giro d'Italia. The following year, he started the Vuelta a España, but was forced to retire with intestinal problems after having held the point leader's jersey for a while. In 1992, he rode his first Tour de France, but retired with a broken collarbone on the first stage in San Sebastián. This gave him the unfortunate honour of being the first rider in the history of the race not to reach French soil.

For 1993, Wüst moved to the French team Novemail–Histor. Disillusioned with the lack of professionalism in the squad, he left for the Le Groupement team in 1995, only for the team to fold for financial reasons. He switched over to the Spanish Castellblanch team and started in the Vuelta a España, where he won three stages. He remained with the team for 1996, winning a stage in the Volta a Catalunya and two in the Tour DuPont. However, differences of opinion with the team's management led to Wüst signing with Festina for 1997.

With his new team, he won a stage at the 1997 Giro d'Italia and three stages of the 1997 Vuelta a España. A year later, with the team still embroiled in the Festina affair, Wüst again took two stage wins during that year's Vuelta a España. He was set to compete in the 1999 Tour de France, but a broken collarbone in a pre-Tour criterium race ruled him out. Instead, he once more started the Vuelta a España, this time taking four stage wins.

Even with his frequent victories, Wüst remained largely anonymous in his native Germany because he was riding for foreign squads as opposed to the popular Team Telekom. He moved into the public eye in 2000, when he started his second-ever Tour de France. The race began with an individual time trial at Futuroscope, which included a categorized climb. Wüst chose to go specifically for the point available for the fastest up the climb and managed to pull over the polka-dot jersey for the best climber at the end of the day, wearing it for the first days of the Tour. On stage five, he beat out his sprinting rivals to take the victory at Vitré. He eventually abandoned the Tour nine stages from the finish in Paris due to a bronchitis.

After the Tour, on 11 August 2000, Wüst took part in the Criterium d'Issoire to prepare for the upcoming Vuelta a España. Here, he collided with Jean-Michel Thilloy while competing for an intermediate sprint at 60 kph. Upon impact, he hit a sharp object, presumably the foot of a road barrier, head-on. He suffered severe injuries to his head, especially his right eye socket. He was treated in a clinic in Clermont-Ferrand and was soon out of mortal danger, but lost sight in his right eye. His team honoured his existing contract into 2001, but with his vision severely impaired, Wüst decided to retire from professional cycling.

Doping allegations
Following the Festina affair, which uncovered widespread use of doping on his team, Wüst was rumoured to have been using performance-enhancing drugs as well. He repeatedly denied these accusations. However, when Willy Voet, the team's soigneur, released a book about the affair in 1999, printed diary entries suggested that Wüst had injected erythropoietin (EPO) six times in January and February 1997. In his defence, Wüst pointed to his hematocrit level from mid-January of that year, which showed a level of 43.3, well below values usually considered an indication of EPO use.

Post-cycling career
After his retirement, Wüst joined Team Coast as a directeur sportif. When the team folded in mid-2003 for financial problems after the signing of Jan Ullrich, he did not join the subsequent Team Bianchi, founded from the remainders of Coast. He worked as an analyst during cycling coverage for German TV station ARD. In this position, he was fired by ARD in 2007, after the broadcaster decided not to use former cyclists in their coverage in the wake of doping revelations at the Telekom team. He returned in 2008, but ARD decided not to continue its broadcast of the Tour de France after that year. On 1 April 2017, Wüst was elected into the office of vice-president, responsible for marketing and communication, of the Bund Deutscher Radfahrer, the German cycling federation.

Major results
Sources:


 * 1986
 * 1st National Junior Road race Championship


 * 1988
 * 1st Grand Prix de Waregem
 * 1st Stage 3 Tour du Loir et Cher Am
 * 1st Stage 7 Giro della Valle d'Aosta
 * 8th GP de la Ville de Rennes


 * 1989
 * 1st Tour de Midi-Pyrénées
 * 1st Stage 3a Tour de Picardie
 * 1st Stage 4b Circuit de la Sarthe
 * 3rd Brussels Cycling Classic
 * 4th Cholet-Pays de la Loire
 * 8th Paris–Tours
 * 8th (TTT) Grand Prix de la Libération
 * 10th Overall Route Adélie


 * 1990
 * 1st Stage 2 Circuit de la Sarthe
 * 1st Stage 2b Paris–Bourges
 * 1st Stage 6 (ITT) Vuelta a Burgos


 * 1991
 * 1st Stages 1 & 3 La Route du Sud
 * 1st Stage 3 Tour Poitou-Charentes en Nouvelle-Aquitaine
 * Herald Sun Tour
 * 1st Sprint classification
 * 1st Stages 1, 11 & 14
 * 1st Stages 6 & 8 Audax Alpine Classic
 * 5th E3 Prijs Vlaanderen
 * 5th Rund um Köln
 * 6th Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne


 * 1992
 * 1st Stages 1, 3, 4 & 6 La Route du Sud
 * 1st Stage 5 Grand Prix du Midi Libre
 * 1st Stages 4a, 6a & 10 Herald Sun Tour
 * 1st Stages 1, 5 & 8 Audax Alpine Classic
 * 1st Points classification Classic Brugge–De Panne
 * 2nd Grand Prix du Morbihan
 * 6th Grand Prix de Denain
 * 10th Overall Tour de l'Avenir
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Stage 1
 * 10th Dwars door België


 * 1993
 * 1st Grand Prix de Denain
 * 1st Grand Prix de Plumelec-Morbihan
 * 1st Stage 2 Volta a Catalunya
 * 1st Stage 2 Vuelta a Burgos
 * Herald Sun Tour
 * 1st Mountain classification
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Stages 3 & 7b
 * 1st Sprint classification Vuelta a Murcia
 * 2nd Binche–Chimay–Binche
 * 3rd Rund um Köln
 * 5th Paris–Camembert
 * 7th Tour de Vendée


 * 1994
 * 1st Stage 1 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré
 * 1st Sprint classification Vuelta a Murcia
 * 3rd Overall Herald Sun Tour
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Stage 1


 * 1995
 * 1st Stages 4, 14, 21 Vuelta a España
 * 1st Stage 2 Quatre Jours de l'Aisne
 * 1st Stage 6 Clásico RCN
 * Herald Sun Tour
 * 1st Mountain classification
 * 1st Stage 7


 * 1996
 * 1st Stages 3a & 11 Tour DuPont
 * 1st Stage 4 Vuelta a Castilla y León
 * Volta a Catalunya
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Stage 7
 * Vuelta Ciclista a La Rioja
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Sprints classification
 * 1st Stages 1a & 3


 * 1997
 * 1st Stages 2, 3 & 5 Vuelta a España
 * 1st Stage 7 Giro d'Italia
 * 1st Stage 4 La Route du Sud
 * Vuelta a Burgos
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Stage 5
 * 7th Hennesee Rundfahrt
 * 8th Grand Prix de Denain
 * 10th Vuelta a Mallorca


 * 1998
 * 1st Stages 14 & 17 Vuelta a España
 * 1st Stage 2 Circuit de la Sarthe
 * 1st Stage 3 Vuelta a Burgos
 * 1st Circuito de Getxo
 * 3rd Overall Vuelta Ciclista de Chile
 * 1st Stages 1, 6, 7, 8, 10 & 11
 * 4th Clásica de Almería


 * 1999
 * Vuelta a España
 * 1st Stages 2, 3, 4 & 7
 * Held After stages 3 & 4
 * Held After stages 3–16
 * 1st Stage 1 Setmana Catalana de Ciclisme
 * Vuelta a Aragón
 * 1st Points classification
 * 1st Stages 2 & 5
 * 1st Stage 4 Tour of Galicia
 * 1st Stage 5 Vuelta a Burgos
 * 1st Stages 10 & 14 Commonwealth Classic
 * 5th Trofeo Luis Puig


 * 2000
 * 1st Stage 5 Tour de France
 * 1st Stages 1, 2, 3, 5 Circuit de la Sarthe
 * 1st Stage 6 Deutschland Tour
 * 1st Stage 1 Vuelta a Aragón
 * 2nd Grand Prix de Rennes
 * 5th Trofeo Palma
 * 9th Philadelphia International Cycling Classic