Kittel snatches another Tour win
July 7, 2014
Kittel was the winner of the bunch sprint along the Mall in London on Monday, the final day of the Tour's opening sojourn in England.
The German's Giant Shimano team came to the fore of the race some two miles from the finish line outside Buckingham Palace, after a 155-kilometer (96-mile) race across largely flat terrain between Cambridge and British capital.
"It was awesome, I'm really happy I could win this stage in front of Buckingham Palace," Kittel said. "There were amazing crowds, great scenery, the team did a really good job, which was a great advertisement for our lead-out train."
It was the 26-year-old's second stage victory, with Kittel having beaten the rest of the 198-man field in the opening stage between Leeds and Harrogate.
No change of yellow jersey
The Slovak Peter Sagan won the battle to ride in Kittel's slipstream to take second place for the Cannondale team. Australia's Mark Renshaw, who has replaced his injured Omega Pharma-Quick Step teammate Mark Cavendish as team sprinter, was in third place.
Italy's Vincenzo Nibali retained the overall leader's yellow jersey, finishing with a two-second advantage having won the second day of the tour - a gruelingly hilly 201-kilometer stage between York and Sheffield, in which Kittel lost valuable time.
The "Grand Depart" of the Tour, which attracted huge crowds in the northern county of Yorkshire, was the first to take place in England since 1997.
rc/mkg (AP, AFP, Reuters)