Marcel Wüst

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. They have two sons, Alexander, born in 1998, and Oliver, born in 2006. However, differences of opinion with the team's management led to Wüst signing with Festina for 1997. 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. 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.

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 . but with his vision severely impaired, Wüst decided to retire from professional cycling. 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 returned in 2008, 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

Grand Tour results timeline Grand Tour general classification results timeline Grand Tour 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Giro d'Italia 143 — — — — — DNF 105 DNF — — Tour de France — — DNF — — — — — — — DNF / Vuelta a España — DNF — — — 93 — 109 106 DNF —