Kittel returns to Ster ZLM Toer a new man

Last year Marcel Kittel went to the Ster ZLM Toer hoping to prove to his then Giant-Alpecin team that he was in good enough shape for their Tour de France team after struggling for several months with viruses that eroded his form. Yet the German came away from the Dutch stage race having failed to convince Giant’s management that he was ready. As a result, instead of staking their Tour hopes on a sprinter who had won eight stages in the two previous Tours, Giant decided to omit him from their line-up.

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Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014). 

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