Former Team Sky and Ineos domestique Luke Rowe has revealed he used to ‘flick’ ex-dopers in the professional peloton, saying he wanted to “make their life hell”.
Rowe, now a directeur sportif at Decathlon-AG2R, made the comments on the latest episode of the Watts Occurring podcast with his friend and former teammate Geraint Thomas.
The comments came as part of a Q&A episode where both men were asked who was generally disliked in the peloton and who they wouldn’t make space for during races.
Luke Rowe Geraint Thomas Watts Occurring 29th Oct 2025 (credit: Watts Occuring/YouTube)
While Rowe and Thomas both insisted that they would not chase specific riders down over personal differences (unlike a certain Texan back in the day), both said they were often protective of their position in the peloton and wouldn’t let riders move up very often.
But then Rowe went a step further in describing how he would actively disrupt and disturb riders in the bunch.
“You know who I did flick? People who had been [tested] positive and came back to the sport. I would just ride through them and go out of my way to do it,” he said.
Luke Rowe at Paris-Roubaix 2021 – Copyright A.S.O., Pauline Ballet (credit: road.cc)
“If it’s black and white and you’ve been done for something and they’re next to me, I’m just going to ride through them. I don’t understand why every rider didn’t do this because then it would make their life hell.
“Because they don’t deserve to come back in my mind.”
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He continued: “And if they shout something, normally they don’t ‘cos they know they haven’t got a leg to stand on. That’s probably the only category of rider I was like, I don’t give a fuck about them. You’ve cheated me. You’ve cheated the sport. Fuck you.
“Imagine [if] every rider had the same mentality. Imagine you got caught for drugs, you’re cheating, [a] scumbag, [you] come back to the sport, you’re on the start line with 160 riders and all of them treat you like shit which is all you deserve. You wouldn’t want to be in that peloton for long.
“You could just bully them out the sport. Back to where they belong.”
Thomas nodded and verbally approved with Rowe’s comments, suggesting a difference in opinion to the one expressed to The Guardian a few weeks ago when he said, in relation to questions over the team’s suspended soigneur David Rozman, “as a rider all you can do is worry about yourself and the next race”.
Rozman, a long-time Sky and Ineos employee, left the Tour de France mid-race after he came under scrutiny for his contacts and messages with convicted doctor Mark Schmidt.
Team Sky previously came under the spotlight over their use of Thereapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE) that enabled riders to use otherwise banned substances, a practice Thomas later criticised, and the ‘Jiffy-bag gate’ the controversy over the contents of a package delivered to Team Sky at the 2011 Critérium du Dauphiné by British Cycling.
The British squad’s team doctor, Richard Freeman, was subsequently struck off the medical register.
Luke Rowe 2022 Worlds AW9_0342 (credit: Alex Whitehead/SWpix.com)
It’s also not the first time Rowe has courted attention with his statements on doping within the peloton.
The retired Welsh rider previously branded former Giro and Vuelta winner Nairo Quintana a “little fucking rat” following his positive test for tramadol that led to his disqualification from the 2022 Tour de France. The podcast was later edited to remove that excerpt without explanation.
Thankfully for Rowe, Decathlon-AG2R are a founding member of the Mouvement pour un Cyclisme Crédible (MPCC), a group of teams which adopts a stricter anti-doping code than the UCI and Team Sky.
The MPCC places greater scrutiny, punishment and ramifications for both doping riders and their team management than would be expected by standard anti-doping protocols.