Kittel wins Tour stage by hair’s breadth
AT the 1986 Belgian Novice Championships Wilfried Nelissen and Serge Baguet were so close on the line they had to have a 1km oneon-one ride-off to decide who won. While the crowd in Nuits-SaintGeorges might have enjoyed something similar yesterday, it was a sticky 35C in Burgundy and the -riders might have kicked up a fuss, especially off the back of a hard week’s racing.
Besides, these days the Tour uses finish-line cameras capable of capturing 10,000 frames per second. They needed that level of precision yesterday to separate the eventual winner Marcel Kittel (Quick-Step Floors) from Edvald Boasson Hagen (Dimenson Data) in one of the closest Tour finishes of all time.
Tissot, who run the timing for the Tour, reckoned Kittel’s eventual winning margin was 0.0003, which amounted to some six millimetres. For all the talk of potential crosswinds, the stage had progressed serenely enough until that point. The riders might as well have been sampling the local produce – champagne at the start, burgundy at the finish – for all that it looked like there might be any action. A breakaway group of four riders escaped up the road but were kept on a very tight leash, never being allowed to build a lead of over four minutes. They were caught with six kilometres remaining.
The sprint was taken at an extremely high pace with the wind behind and, as they entered the final 200 metres, it looked for all the world as if former Sky rider Boasson Hagen was going to take his first Tour stage win since 2011. Kittel, though, managed to work his way out of a tight spot and put in a devastating kick to the line.
Kittel, who now has three stage wins at this Tour, also claimed the green jersey from French national champion Arnaud Demare (FDJ), who could only finish 11th. Telegraph GETTY IMAGES