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Marcel Kittel takes lie detector test to try and prove he's not doping

Sprinter only one of 20 invited German riders to step up.

Marcel Kittel, the German sprinter who exploded to prominence when he won the opening stage of this year’s Tour de France, has undergone a lie detector test in an attempt to ‘prove’ that he is not doping.

Germany’s Bild magazine challenged 20 German Tour riders, from teams such as the former Gerolsteiner, Milram, and T-Mobile squads, to submit to polygraph testing to demonstrate they were not doping.

Only Kittel stepped up.

Marcel Kittel after winning Stage 1 of the 2013 Tour of Oman (picture courtesy Tour of Oman)
Marcel Kittel after winning Stage 1 of the 2013 Tour of Oman (picture courtesy Tour of Oman)

The 25-year-old has insisted he is part of a new, clean generation of racers. Toward the end of last year, he took to Twitter to lambast those who defended Lance Armstrong.

"I feel SICK when I read that Contador, Sanchez & Indurain still support Armstrong. How does someone want to be credible by saying that?!" he tweeted.

"It makes it all worse. They should play their false game somewhere else."

A polygraph is actually a collection of instruments that measure physiological indicators such as blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity. A questioner asks neutral questions such as the subject's name, and irrelevant questions they are likely to lie about such as "Have you ever told a lie?" to establish baseline readings, then asks a mixture of relevant and control questions.

Kittel was put through the polygraph process by forensic psychologist Holger Leutz who concluded that Kittel was speaking the truth.

“The things we have monitored during the interview were very evenly measured,” said Leutz. “That is a sign of credibility. Kittel makes us believe in a pure generation of cyclists. I dare say in response to what the detector indicates that Marcel Kittel has never used doping and is a clean athlete.”

“I have nothing to hide, so I decided to take the test,” Kittel told Bild. “I stand for clean sport, and the test proves it.”

Polygraph reliability

Or does it? Unfortunately, the history of the polygraph is strewn with failure. In his book, The Secret Race, Tyler Hamilton wrote:

I learned that if you’re vague enough, you don’t have to lie. I said things like “I’ve always been a hard worker,” and “I’ve been at the top consistently for ten years,” and “I’ve tested clean dozens of times,” and so on. I learned that if you repeat something often enough, you begin to believe it. I even took a lie-detector test to help prove my innocence, and passed. (Though, just before taking it, we Googled a few tips for beating the test. Clenching your buttocks, I remember, was one.)

In more serious cases, double-agent Aldrich Ames passed two polygraph tests while spying for the Soviet Union, and serial killer Gary Ridgway passed a polygraph in 1984, only confessing almost 20 years later when confronted with DNA evidence.

As a result, polygraph tests are inadmissible as evidence in criminal cases in most jurisdictions, though they may still be used during investigations to fool or intimidate suspects into confessing.

Germany is one of the countries that absolutely forbids the use of polygraph evidence in criminal trials.

Experience in lying seems to be the biggest factor in beating a polygraph, as Hamilton implies. In 1978, Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, said: “Americans are not very good at [fooling the polygraph], because we are raised to tell the truth and when we lie it is easy to tell we are lying. But we find a lot of Europeans and Asiatics can handle that polygraph without a blip, and you know they are lying and you have evidence that they are lying."

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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16 comments

Avatar
Froome's Thoughts | 10 years ago
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Great article. I read the headline about Kittel on CyclingNews and immediately wondered why it isn't used by the UCI. Seems quite obvious now.

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The Rumpo Kid | 10 years ago
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I read that Richard Helms was the only Director of the CIA ever convicted of lying to Congress. Who said Americans don't do irony?

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Jimbonic replied to The Rumpo Kid | 10 years ago
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The Rumpo Kid wrote:

I read that Richard Helms was the only Director of the CIA ever convicted of lying to Congress. Who said Americans don't do irony?

Brilliant!

(Or are you lying?!)  4

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jackh | 10 years ago
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Wow, that quote from the CIA spook is absolutely classic!  19

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Decster | 10 years ago
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Well cycling is scraping the bottom of the barrel if it thinks lie detector tests are proof of a clean rider.

Kittel is an idiot for doing it. He should have called for independent anti doping rather than taking a test that is a waste of time and a joke.

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TeamCC | 10 years ago
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Penn and Teller did a show on lie detectors and how to beat them. You wouldn't think Marcel has seen this and tried it out if he was dirty? http://youtu.be/bScv6kfxRyE?t=6m29s

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racingcondor | 10 years ago
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The more I hear from Marcel Kittel the more I like the guy.

Long may him and Cav enjoy a decent rivalry (once Cav has a team that's got a clue what the hell they're doing in the last 1km that is).

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notfastenough | 10 years ago
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Oh joy. We've got to the stage where an athlete can't be believed to be clean based on in-comp testing, out-of-comp testing and the blood passport, but it's ok, because he indulged a newspaper with some bullsh*t hokum so NOW we think he's clean? What's next, a ouija board?! Psychic's holding a lock of his hair to locate the nearest EPO?!

(I do think he's clean, but IMHO this circus does nothing for for the credibility of him or the sport)

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beej.a | 10 years ago
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back to kissing your flag helms you daft prick

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Leviathan | 10 years ago
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Where is Asiatica? Does it has a border with Hispanistan? Americans have some funny ideas about race.

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jijiandnoah | 10 years ago
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This is kind of stupid, and disappointing that Kittel has chosen to take part to be honest. It's one of those "if you don't do it then you MUST have something to hide" arguments, ignoring the notorious unreliability of polygraph testing.

The simple fact that polygraphs are not admissible as evidence in UK courts, but taken as absolute and incontrovertible evidence on the Jeremy Kyle show should tell you everything you need to know

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vasgko2 | 10 years ago
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The funny quote of the day

"Americans are not very good at [fooling the polygraph], because we are raised to tell the truth"

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cat1commuter | 10 years ago
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Polygraph is rubbish. And that statement from Richard Helms, former CIA director, is just plain racist!

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qwerky | 10 years ago
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Not sure I would have stepped forward. If polygraphs are notoriously unreliable then can they produce false positives as well? Looks like he stands to lose a lot more than he stands to gain.

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ricolek | 10 years ago
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Doesn't matter if it's credible, what matters is that he wasn't afraid to do it. Doper wouldn't do it even if it wasn't 100% reliable.

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DrJDog replied to ricolek | 10 years ago
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ricolek wrote:

Doesn't matter if it's credible, what matters is that he wasn't afraid to do it. Doper wouldn't do it even if it wasn't 100% reliable.

A doper like Tyler Hamilton?

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