“To be honest…” Michel Hessmann pauses, searching for the right words. “In the end it was a really good time. I would never change it.” The 24-year-old is speaking about his 21-month absence from cycling for testing positive for the banned diuretic chlorthalidone in an out-of-competition test in June 2023 while riding for Visma-Lease a Bike. He denied knowledge of taking a prohibited substance and claimed that a contaminated over-the-counter painkillers could have led to the positive test, something the German anti-doping authorities agreed with. “Obviously it was shit and I was incredibly angry a lot of times. I was also incredibly disappointed and anxious and whatever else – not calm at all, even though I was learning to be calm – but it changed my outlook on so many things. It changed my whole life.”
Hessmann is speaking to me at Movistar’s 2026 team launch in Valencia, Spain. The German joined the Spanish team last January and returned to racing in March. His Spanish is improving, and his previously short brown hair has evolved into a head full of curly hair. He looks different, and he acts differently to what I’d imagined. I’d expected resistance from Hessmann to my questioning. Usually – and for entirely understandable reasons – still active sportspeople who return from doping bans are reluctant to discuss their time away from sport, preferring to put it behind them and move on. Hessmann definitely wants to look to the future rather than dwell on the past, but I gather a willingness to open up and discuss his period in exile. It changed him, and he’s proud of that. Unfortunately, due to Movistar’s team bus waiting for him, we’re only allowed 10 minutes to talk. Nonetheless, what little he does say is illuminating.
“Now I am a completely different person with a completely different environment than I was [and had] before, and I like it more,” he says. “I am doing cycling now as an active choice,” he goes on. “Not just because it was always there and the obvious way to go. It’s not everything anymore. I am very happy with my life and I can imagine myself as a person away from cycling.”
This is notable. Hessmann is part of the same generation that emerged post-Covid, and has not just adapted to WorldTour racing’s demands, but shaped it. He and his peers are characterised by being single-minded and entirely fixated on their pursuit of sporting glory. Nothing else matters, except bike racing. Hessmann, though, is saying that his time away from the sport made him reassess his relationship with it. “If from one day to another it [his cycling career] would be done again, I would be OK. I would still hurt for sure, but it’s only one part of me.”
Hessmann was a regular present in breakaways at 2025's Vuelta a España.
We don’t have time to discuss his case in-depth (WADA appealed Germany’s anti-doping body’s lenient ban and handed him a 21-month suspension, down from a possible four-year sanction), but Hessmann wants to press home how he’s developed as a person since he was first made aware of the adverse analytic finding. Movistar, the team who rescued his cycling career, are thanked for their approach. “First of all they want me just to enjoy it,” he says. “It’s really hard for me to understand but they’ve given me so much room just to grow, just to go easy on myself. Even though I’ve changed my outlook on cycling a lot – it plays a different role for me now – when I’m at the race I am for sure all in and I can be very hard, putting a lot of pressure on myself, and be very nervous. They [Movistar] are incredibly calm. I’m not a calm person.”
As a junior and U23 rider Hessmann showed serious promise. He joined Jumbo-Visma’s development team, and was then promoted to their WorldTour team aged 20 in 2022. That same year, he was leading the Tour de l’Avenir until the final weekend, but still finished third overall. “I still don’t know how I ended up showing that,” he says, rather self-deprecatingly. “I was definitely not expecting it.”
Less than a year later he rode and completed his maiden Grand Tour, supporting Primož Roglič to win the Giro d’Italia. Only a few weeks later came the news about his failed anti-doping test. Now he’s back in the peloton, what path does he expect his career to take from here? “I still don’t really know,” he says when asked what type of rider he is nowadays. “Especially with the break, last year was basically just being busy catching up with whatever the peloton has done in the last two years which is quite impressive, or even catching up to my old level. The coolest thing would be to close the gap to the level that I had in the U23 ranks, like in l’Avenir, and translate that into the WorldTour but I don’t know how realistic that is.”
Hessmann rode 55 race days in 2025, including the entirety of the Vuelta a España. “Last year in the beginning I was way off, but then the Vuelta gave me a lot of hope,” he says. “And I was in the break four times. That was amazing. Now I feel like it’s less overwhelming than it was.” Hessmann won’t state any grand ambition now he’s back competing as a professional cyclist in the World Tour. All he wants to do is to enjoy it, to repay the faith Movistar have and had in him, and not forget the complicated journey it took to get to where he is now. “It’s just about being happy with whatever I give them [Movistar],” he says, “because they know I will try to give it my all and at some point it will work.”
