Kittel's success (two stage wins and holding the overall lead for a day) at the Giro, and subsequent withdrawal from it to preserve his freshness, had the German's hopes high for a strong Tour de France, and in all fairness, out of the first four flat stages, he has won one. But that doesn't tell the whole story. If his team had been better organised, it could easily have been all four.
In Stage 1, EQS were well placed coming into the finishing straight alongside Mark Cavendish's Dimension Data train, but Kittel lost the wheel of his lead out man Fabio Sabattini, and while he managed to get a slipstream off Cavendish and Peter Sagan, it left him two bike lengths behind Cav, which he was only able to halve.
Once can be chalked up to bad luck, but it was a similar story in Stage 3. Kittel held third wheel under the flamme rouge behind Sabattini and Tony Martin, but Martin pulled off too shallow, holding Sabattini up and letting Lotto NL-Jumbo and Dimension Data past in a pincer movement that boxed Kittel in. Kittel still rallied to 7th from absolutely nowhere 300m out, again showing that he was capable of winning the stage given a clear run.
Kittel was also narrowly beaten out in Stage 6, where he did get a clean run in the end, but no thanks to his team, who lost him in the last few hundred metres, Kittel finding Bryan Coquard and Andre Greipel between himself and Sabattini. He did lead towards the line, but only because those issues forced him to launch too early, again allowing Cavendish to beat him to the line.
Even Kittel's one success so far, Stage 4, wasn't plain sailing, as the EQS team were hugely held up by a bottleneck at a roundabout a few km from the line. With only Lotto-Soudal with an uninterrupted run, EQS drove forward to get Kittel the leadout he needed, but it was hardly a well-organised victory.
So that one stage could well have been four, had Kittel been put in better places by his men, as he proved every single time that he had the power and pace to beat anyone in a clean straight fight.
I tweeted a stat after that stage 6 that Cav had won three stages in one Tour for the first time since 2012, which dawned on me was the last year he wasn't riding for Etixx(then Omega Pharma)-QuickStep. And I'm not sure that's coincidence.
Cav's 2013 in particular was riddled with sprint train issues, as while he's always had his main man Mark Renshaw with him, the rest of his train were fairly inexperienced (an argument used by Kittel this year too) and were letting him down all too often. Even on Cav's domain, the Champs Elysees, he was beaten, by... Marcel Kittel, given a perfect lead out by his Argos-Shimano team.
Armed with the two men who I'd go so far as to call the best sprinters of all time (argue that out below), in the last three and a half years of the Tour, the QuickStep team have won four stages. Or, to put it another way, as many as Kittel won in 2014 alone. Even writing off 2014, when Cavendish fell in stage 1 and had to withdraw, it's still not far over a stage a year, which, to quote Cav, is shit.
You can't really blame waning skills either. That was the argument put forward against Cavendish in the last few years, but his three wins this year (when he was expected to struggle due to focus on the track) put paid to that. And Kittel has shown he's back to his devastating best, after a torrid 2015 that should have opened the door for the then-Cavendish led EQS to score more wins.
Oddly, in the 'lesser' races this year, the EQS train has been looking good this year, as it has in the intermediate sprints in the Tour itself. Kittel took overall victory and two stage wins in his season opening Dubai Tour with his new lead out train, so inexperience can't even really be blamed there. They just seem to go to pieces when under the pressure of a stage finish.
Tim de Waele/TDWSport.com
Sprinters can win stages without lead out trains. Cavendish spent all of his 2012 Tour at Sky without a proper lead out train, as they were focused on GC, so he went guerrilla and latched on to other teams from way out. Peter Sagan has done the same in his time at Tinkoff. The difference there is that by knowing they have to do that, riders can plan for it. Losing your supposed lead out man 400m from the line leaves you in a panic, and by the time you've rethought your plans, the race has already been won.
Maybe that list of riders I gave at the start of this blog are the problem. Maybe EQS are spreading themselves too thin, and need to sacrifice their GC or sprint hopes to allow their riders to perform to their capabilities. Something definitely needs to change. For the last few years, EQS have had two of the best sprinters in the world at their disposal, and they've made both look distinctly average.
No comments:
Post a Comment