Marcel Kittel has won his second stage of the 2014 Tour de France in a royal sprint finish in front of Buckingham Palace in Lonon. Marcel was once again set up perfectly by a near-perfect sprint formation that overcame wet roads on the fast run-in to central London.
The stage was set for a grandstand finish after the peloton swallowed up the final breakaway rider as the lined out peloton raced into the streets of the English capital and with four kilometres to go the Team Giant-Shimano sprint formation hit the front and never let up. Long pulls from John Degenkolb and Roy Curvers led the way before Marcel launched his finishing sprint, unchallenged to take a superb second win in three days and his sixth Tour stage.
The third stage of the race was a flat leg from Cambridge to The Mall in London, the finish of the 2012 Olympic Road Race, without one categorised climb on the route. With no KOM points up for grabs the peloton was happy to let two riders slip away early on and spend the day out front.
This left the team in an ideal position being able to not spend too much energy controlling the break. Cheng Ji once again did the lion’s share of the work as the controller and the first rider in the sprint formation before the race headed into the capital city.
The two riders split in the closing kilometres leaving a sole rider out front as the roads started to turn slick under the English rain. Once the race was all together again the lead-outs started to take shape and Team Giant-Shimano waited for the opportune moment to hit the front before leading right to the finish.
The team’s coaches looked at this stage earlier in the year and the information passed onto the team proved vital here, with everyone knowing what to expect and then how to react to different situations.
Coming around the final corner Marcel was in prime position sitting in the wheels before jumping with just over 200m to go. Nobody was able to come round him as he punched the air for the second time in three days showing his sprinting dominance in this race.
Reaction
After the stage, Team Giant-Shimano coach Marc Reef said: “Once again I am so proud to be a part of this. Today was another amazing day, both with how the guys rode together and also for the amount of people out there.
“It was near perfect yes but there is always something extra you can do to make that bit better and even on a day like today we can learn and improve the sprint formation.
“It is always hard with rain and you have to react and come through a bit earlier but this means you need to gauge your effort and not run out of guys too quickly.
“The guys pulled great again today, Cheng [Ji] did a great job as controller and then there were some huge pulls at the end from the positioners to stay in front. The guys stayed calm, kept a cool head and made it another great day for the team.”
“Today was one of the best finish lines I have ever seen, with the amount of people lining the roads it was incredible,” said Marcel after the stage.
“The team did another great job today and the finish was a perfect finish for me. The coaches had looked at the stage earlier in the year and with their information we knew what to expect – this helped a lot today and meant we could react easily when we needed to.”
Koen De Kort added: “That was incredible. It was a very different finish to what we had on stage one with honest, flat, straight roads on the run in to the finish.
“As planned we came to the front with just over three kilometres to go. It was really hard to communicate out there as you tried to shout to each other but the crowds were shouting louder. So it came down to instinct and we showed that we can cope with something like this without problems.”
