Marcel Kittel (Skil-Shimano) is proving unbeatable in the sprint in this year’s Tou of Poland, taking his third stage in a row, between Będzin and Katowice, by a similar clear margin. The 23-year-old German left his sprint late, as he had done on the two previous occasions, almost colliding with a leaning spectator as he came around next to the barriers. Once he had opened up his sprint though, he pulled clear of the rest of the fast men, crossing the line more than two lengths clear.
Romain Feillu (Vacansoleil-DCM) was the best of the rest behind Kittel, after the Dutch team had done much of the work to keep the pace high in the closing kilometres, with Jonas Aaen Jorgensen (Saxo Bank-SunGard) in third.
“I’m thrilled with this victory,” saod Kittel. “The stage was the hardest one of the three so far; the team was tired after the hard work they did the first two days, but they were great today, too. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for the faith they have in me, cycling is a team sport. It was a super-fast final sprint, my bike’s computer surpassed 78 kph!”
The first, flat phase of the race is now over and, with the fourth stage heading to the mountains in the south of the country, including three climbs of the Kat Kubalonka, Kittel is unlikely to add a fourth stage win and will likely lose his yellow jersey.
“In the next stages I’m going to be especially careful to “survive” the mountains and I’m going to try to help my teammates whenever I can,” he said. “The points jersey? Let’s see how these next three days go and then we can talk about that.”
Once again, the 135.7km stage was dominated by a breakaway, with Arkimedes Arguelyes (Katusha), Daniel Sesma (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Gianluca Maggiore (De Rosa-Ceramica Flaminia), Lukasz Bodnar (CCC Polsat-Polkovice) and Piotr Gawroski (Polish National Team) escaping in the early kilometres.
The five riders quickly built up a lead of five minutes before Kittel’s Skil-Shimano team decided to peg them back. As they entered the finishing circuit after 43.8km, then crossed the finish line to start the first of eight 11.2km finishing circuits, they still held that advantage.
Steadily the lead began to come down though, with the peloton led by a combination of Skil-Shimano, HTC-Highroad and Rabobank, and with four laps to go it had dropped to exactly two minutes.
The next time across the line, with 33.5km to go, it was just 1’30”, and with two laps remaining it had been cut to 1’01”. Gawroski had been having trouble staying with the others for some time and, as Bodnar and Maggiore began attacking inside the final 20km, they finally shed the Polish National team rider.
With 17km to go, and the peloton within little more than thirty seconds, Bodnar jumped away from the group. The other three briefly tried to chase the Polish rider but, with little cohesion in the group, he managed to get away alone.
As he crossed the line with just one 11.2km lap to go, Bodnar led the other three by 18 seconds, but the peloton was now just seven further seconds behind them. The three chasers were quickly taken back by the Omega Pharma-Lotto led peloton and Bodnar himself was caught with just under 10km to go.
Vacansoleil-DCM came forward with 6km to go to share the work with Omega Pharma-Lotto, to keep the pace high and prevent any late attacks. Into the final kilometre though, it was Leopard Trek that took over, followed by HTC-Highroad.
As in stage two it was John Degenkolb (HTC-Highroad) that launched his sprit first, with Adam Blythe (Omega Pharma-Lotto) trying to come around him. Kittel came around though, almost clipping a spectator on the way as he passed close to the left hand barrier, and won by the same clear advantage as the previous two days
“When I moved up to the pros, everyone thought I was a time trialist after the good results I obtained in this specialty among the under-23s,” said the German. “In my head, however, I felt like I could become a sprinter.
“When I joined Skil-Shimano I started training a lot to work on intensity, with specific workouts for sprints,” he explained. “The work paid off. Now I feel more confident in the sprint and this also gives great motivation to me and all my team.”