Marcel Kittel retains his Dubai Tour title
Quick-Step Floors' Marcel Kittel won Stage Five to retain his Dubai Tour title by out sprinting Team Sky's Elia Viviani and Astana's Riccardo Minali.
After Stage Four was cancelled due to strong winds, Kittel would've had to have had some awful misfortune to not win his third stage of the week and with it his second Dubai Tour.
Stage Five took the peloton on a loopy 120 kilometre tour of Dubai city centre. Such were the nature of the time gaps behind Kittel, no one could catch him on time bonuses alone, and therefore no break was attempted for the first hour of racing.
Astana's Dmitriy Gruzdev and UAE Abu Dhabi's Matteo Bono decided to have a go with 80km to go, with BMC Racing's Florin Gerts and Bahrain Merida's Ivan Garcia Cortina bridging across soon after.
The pace remained high all day, as the peloton weren't going to put the prospect of a sprint finish in jeopardy. 48 kmph was the average speed, meaning the breakaway could barely hold on to a minutes advantage.
Garcia beat Gruzdev for maximum points and three bonus seconds at the first intermediate sprint, with Gruzdev claiming the spoils at the second sprint with a long distance effort ahead of Gerts.
The breakaway was inevitably reeled in at ten km to go, with the sprint trains taking control and lining up to negotiate the tricky couple of 90 degree right hand bends onto the finish at City Walk.
Dimension Data seemed to have got one over on Kittel and co as the sprint for the line got under way, but what looked like a mechanical ended Mark Cavendish's hopes of a stage win, leaving the German only having to hold off Viviani and Minali for the stage win and his second Dubai Tour.
With the exception of the Giro, Kittel was quiet in the Grand Tours in 2016, so maybe this is a sign of his resurgence and hopefully we'll see him in many more battles with the likes of John Degenkolb and Cavendish as the WorldTour progresses.
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| Credit: cyclingweekly.co.uk |
After Stage Four was cancelled due to strong winds, Kittel would've had to have had some awful misfortune to not win his third stage of the week and with it his second Dubai Tour.
Stage Five took the peloton on a loopy 120 kilometre tour of Dubai city centre. Such were the nature of the time gaps behind Kittel, no one could catch him on time bonuses alone, and therefore no break was attempted for the first hour of racing.
Astana's Dmitriy Gruzdev and UAE Abu Dhabi's Matteo Bono decided to have a go with 80km to go, with BMC Racing's Florin Gerts and Bahrain Merida's Ivan Garcia Cortina bridging across soon after.
The pace remained high all day, as the peloton weren't going to put the prospect of a sprint finish in jeopardy. 48 kmph was the average speed, meaning the breakaway could barely hold on to a minutes advantage.
Garcia beat Gruzdev for maximum points and three bonus seconds at the first intermediate sprint, with Gruzdev claiming the spoils at the second sprint with a long distance effort ahead of Gerts.
The breakaway was inevitably reeled in at ten km to go, with the sprint trains taking control and lining up to negotiate the tricky couple of 90 degree right hand bends onto the finish at City Walk.
Dimension Data seemed to have got one over on Kittel and co as the sprint for the line got under way, but what looked like a mechanical ended Mark Cavendish's hopes of a stage win, leaving the German only having to hold off Viviani and Minali for the stage win and his second Dubai Tour.
With the exception of the Giro, Kittel was quiet in the Grand Tours in 2016, so maybe this is a sign of his resurgence and hopefully we'll see him in many more battles with the likes of John Degenkolb and Cavendish as the WorldTour progresses.
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