Marcel Kittel wins opening stage of Tour de Pologne 2011 - Cycling News
Skil-Shimano team’s Marcel Kittel won the bunch sprint of the first stage and also takes overall lead in Tour de Pologne 2011 on Sunday, July 31.
The race started in Pruszkow and ended in Warszawa. Recently, Kittel took the fifth stage of Tour de Langkawi and also grabbed first place in Prorace Berlin. He also took the overall standing of Delta Tour Zeeland.
After winning the stage, Kittel said, “It was a hard sprint with such a straight finish, I have to say a big thank you to the whole team. Tom Veelers did a perfect lead-out even if he launched me perhaps a bit early. But I still controlled the situation.
If there's another sprint I hope I can win again.”
The group of seven cyclists slipped up the road including, Nonetheless, Arkimedes Argueles (Katusha), Pierre Cazaux (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Fabio Piscopiello (De Rosa-Ceramica Flaminia), Carlos Oyarzun (Movistar), Bartolmiej Matysiak and Adrian Kurek (Poland).
All of them working together but never built an advantage of three minutes and stay in the race. The two teams HTC-Highroad and Liquigas-Cannondale managed to pull them back.
In the final lap of the stage, nobody was able to make an attack while Liquigas showed his good effort and suggested that Peter Sagan would be able to catch the leading cyclists but he failed to hold his pace in the sprint.
However, Marcel Kittel increased his pace and managed to gain a lead and he covered the distance of 101.5 kilometres in 2 hours, 7 minutes and 26 seconds. Alexander Kristoff was in second and Francesco Chicchi grabbed third place.
Kittel further added, “First my team mate Veelers steered me, then I took advantage of Degenkolb’s wheel and in the final I managed to burst forth with power and beat all my rivals.”
Marcel also took the overall lead with the timing of 2 hours, 7 minutes and 16 seconds and Kristoff was runner-up with 4 seconds behind German.
The next stage will start in Częstochowa and ended in Dąbrowa Górnicza. All the cyclists will cover the distance of 162 kilometres.
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