Kittel wins Eneco opener at Middelburg

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Marcel Kittel (Argos-Shimano) bounced back from his disappointing debut at the Tour de France to take stage victory on the opening day of the Eneco Tour in Middelburg. After a crash inside the final three kilometres reduced the front end of the peloton to just 30 riders, Kittel showed his quality by distancing Arnaud Demare (FDJ-BigMat) and Taylor Phinney (BMC) in the finishing sprint.

Kittel was able to count on the expert lead-out of Tom Veelers and he paid tribute to the work of his Argos-Shimano team, who navigated him to the front of the bunch ahead of the frenetic closing kilometres.

"There was a very strong team work today and everybody could see that the boys did a great job," Kittel said afterwards. "It was still a hard sprint for me, as I had spent two weeks off the bike in July."

Illness forced Kittel to bring his debut Tour de France to a premature end on stage 5, but he was pleased to take victory in his first competitive outing since that disappointment, as he builds towards the Vuelta a España. "When I was out of the Tour, I was angry about the situation but in the end, you can’t change that," he said. “It’s something that can happen and it was an experience in itself and I’m looking at new goals now, like the Eneco Tour."

Kittel was ultimately a comfortable winner over Demare, while the rest of the leading group was never truly in contention in the final sprint. Phinney had been positioned to lead out his sprinter Adam Blythe, but ended up finishing ahead of the Briton, while Heinrich Haussler (Garmin-Sharp) and José Joaquin Rojas (Movistar) found themselves with too much ground to make up in the closing metres.

The early part of the stage was dominated by a lengthy two-man break featuring Pablo Urtasun (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Staf Scheirlinckx (Accent Jobs-Willems Veranda). Riding into a block headwind as the stage headed towards the exposed Zeeland area, the duo built up a lead of almost ten minutes at one point, before Rabobank, Omega Pharma-QuickStep and Garmin-Sharp combined to reel them in.

In a windswept final 30 kilometres, a number of squads looked to force the initiative by forming echelons but the peloton would remain compact until it was split by a crash with two kilometres still to race.

Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank) made his first racing appearance since February, when he was belatedly handed a suspension for his positive test for clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France, and he finished safely in the main peloton.

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