Marcel Kittel Wins The Tour De Picardie

Last updated : 12 May 2013 By Covsupport News Service

Marcel Kittel won the Tour De Picardie in France with a third stage victory to go with one stage win and a second place.

On a  third and final 171km stage from Nanteuil-le-Haudouin to Soissons,  Sojasun's Maxime Daniel took the first sprint but was third on the first King Of The Mountains climb at Côte de Braine and third again on the Côte de Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique before he along with David Boucher of FDJ and Benjamin Giraud of La Pomme Marseille, were caught by the peloton.

Race leader Bryan Coquard of Europcar took the second sprint on the first visit to the finish line in Soissons. However, second time around, he was beaten into 12th place as Argo Shimano's Marcel Kittel who took the win in a time of 4.05.13 and the race overall .

Speaking about his overall victory to his team's press office, Kittel said:  "Today was a very good day – a good ‘late’ birthday present for me. We had a good position for this stage as Europcar had the leader and were forced to take control, so we could save some energy for the final. The last 40km was quite tough as there were some hills and a lot of attacks. Luckily the Team could help me to stay me out of the wind and counter the attacks.

"We decided from the start that we would focus on the final sprint and not the intermediate one, so we decided to go all in. After we had lost Tom Veelers (NED) due to a crash, it was up to Ramon Sinkeldam (NED) to be my last lead-out man. He positioned me on the front to easily start sprinting with 200m to go. The lead-out went really well and just like Friday, you can see that everybody believes in our goal and stays cool which is what makes the difference and is the key to our success.

"I am really happy to win the final stage, but even more happier to win the General Classification today as well. For a sprinter it doesn’t happen that often, so that makes it very special and I am really proud of it and of the team who made it happen."