Marcel Kittel wins the first stage of the Eneco Tour 2012
Marcel Kittel of Team Argos-Shimano wins the opening stage of the Eneco Tour after his splendid performance during the event.
The German crossed the 203.9 kilometre pursuit to Middelburg in a quickest time of 5 hours, 38 minutes and 28 seconds and occupied the top podium position.
Taylor Phinney of Team BMC, Heinrich Haussler of Team Garmin-Sharp and Adam Blythe of Team BMC occupied the third, the fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
"There was a very strong team work today and everybody could see that the boys did a great job," Kittel said afterwards.
"It was still a hard sprint for me, as I had spent two weeks off the bike in July".
Marcel was all set to mark his Tour de France debut but illness forced him out of the French race during the fifth stage.
The cyclist has marked his return to professional cycling at the Eneco Tour and he is delighted to win the first competitive race after his come-back just ahead of the Vuelta a Espana, 2012.
"When I was out of the Tour, I was angry about the situation but in the end, you can’t change that," he said.
“It’s something that can happen and it was an experience in itself and I’m looking at new goals now, like the Eneco Tour".
Pablo Urtasun Perez of team Euskaltel-Euskadi, Aidis Kruopis of Team Orica-GreenEdge and Jose Francisco Ventoso Alberdi of Team Movistar succeeded during the first, the second and the third sprints of the event.
Kittel leads the stage 1 classifications with a healthy margin of 4 seconds over Arnaud Demare of Team FDJ-BigMat.
Taylor Phinney of Team BMC is further 2 seconds behind at the third spot with Aidis Kruopis of Team Orica-GreenEdge and Jose Francisco Ventoso Alberdi of Team Movistar holding the fourth and the fifth spots respectively.
Marcel is top of the chart after the stage 1 point’s classifications with as many as 30 UCI points in his back pocket.
Arnaud Demare, Taylor Phinney, Heinrich Haussler and Adam Blythe secured the next four positions respectively with 25, 22, 19 and 17 points respectively.
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