Sprinting Made Easy

The story behind Marcel Kittel’s dominance of the Tour’s sprint stages.

- Sophie Hurcom

By the time Marcel Kittel took his fifth stage victory at the Tour de France last week in Pau, he had begun to make winning sprints look simple. Such has been the nature of the German’s speed and power, and the seeming effortlessness with which he has distanced his rivals on the finish line at this year’s race. These wins by Kittel and his Quick Step Floors team have provided textbook examples of the immaculately rehearsed sprint finish.

Yet such polished perfection couldn’t be further from the actual truth of sprinting. While a team will go into a stage with a plan of what they want to happen, the pace, speed, chaos and general messiness of bunch sprints means it’s rarely executed to perfection.

While the focus of a sprint stage is centred on the final kilometres of the race and the gallop towards the line, what happens in the long build-up is just as important. It may look like the peloton has been cruising along at a leisurely pace for 200km but if a team gets it wrong here, the day might not even end in a sprint at all.

Take stage 10 from Périgueux to Bergerac, Kittel’s fourth stage win in this year’s Tour. Wanty-Groupe Gobert’s Yoann Offredo broke away from the peloton almost from the off, and was shortly joined by Elie Gesbert (Fortuneo-Oscaro). Over the course of the day’s 178km, the bunch settled into its rhythm and the French duo was never allowed a time gap of more than five or so minutes from the main field.

End game begins