Kittel sprints to victory in Cérilly

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Marcel Kittel (Team Argos-Shimano) made up for his absence from the previous day's finale by winning the sprint of the second stage at Paris-Nice by a clear margin. Elia Viviani of Cannondale was second followed by Leigh Howard of Orica-GreenEdge in third.

The second place result was enough to secure the overall lead for Viviani. He took over the yellow jersey from FDJ's Nacer Bouhanni, who crashed out of the stage, but was said not to be seriously injured. Viviani now leads by seven seconds over Sylvain Chavanel (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) and eight seconds on prologue winner Damien Gaudin (Team Europcar).

"The final was really hard," Kittel said. He said the plan was to come up to the front as late as possible, but he found himself up there earlier than planned. "I found my way through and powered on to the finish line."

The German sprinter for the Dutch team had looked to win the mass sprint in yesterday's first stage, but missed a decisive split in the peloton after an untimely puncture and found himself in the second group. The 24-year-old sprinter was determined to make amends in today's finale. "I was really frustrated yesterday," he said. "I was really happy that it worked today."

Break groups and crashes

Once again the early break formed virtually from the start, with Gatis Smukulis (Katusha), Kris Boeckmans (Vacansoleil-DCM) and Mads Christensen (Saxo-Tinkoff) taking off within the first kilometer. They built up a lead of up to 4:05 before Boeckmans was pulled back by his team after winning the first intermediate sprint. The other two were reeled back in after 43km in front.

Vacansoleil-DCM wasn't through for the day, though, and about 20km later the Dutch ProTeam sent Thomas De Gendt and Romain Feillu up the road. They were soon joined by Mikel Astarloza (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Maxime Bouet (Ag2r La Mondiale). Their gap topped out at just over four minutes and stayed generally around that mark.

No one was in a hurry today with the pace exceptionally slow as the riders faced a stiff headwind. The sun of the previous days was gone, too, as rain started sprinkling down with about 70km to go. There were several crashes around that time, with Gaudin hitting the pavement and having trouble chasing back to the field, although he eventually caught up.

As slowly as everyone was going and as reluctant as the field was to catch the group too early, the gap started falling and soon was around the one minute mark.

Bouhanni left the race with about 60km to go after slipping out on a left hand corner and landing on his face. A momentary truce was called in the peloton to await word of Bouhanni's condition, but the French champion's fate was sealed when an ambulance appeared on the scene and the FDJ rider was taken away on a stretcher.

With their leader out of the race, FDJ stopped setting tempo at the head of the peloton and Argos-Shimano eventually moved up to take over the task. With 44.4km to go, the break was over and the sprinters' teams started eying one another.

The pace still didn't pick up and the field rode along as one big mass. Many teams shared the low-speed lead work, with the Belgian national jersey of Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) often seen up front.

The second intermediate sprint was at the finish line, which the field crossed before setting off on a closing circuit. Viviani took the three points and three seconds ahead of Sylvain Chavanel, who took second place with two points and seconds. Ruben Perez Moreno of Euskaltel was third. That was enough to give Viviani the virtual yellow jersey.

Boonen continued to lead the field and by now the pace had picked up noticeably. Boonen dropped back as the race neared the finale, so as to avoid the madness of the expected mass sprint.

Several riders tried to take off from the group, but were brought back quickly. The group came en masse under the flamme rouge at 1km to go and FDJ moved to the front, with Yoann Offredo driving hard. Lampre-Merida responded but the team's veteran sprinter Alessandro Petacchi found himself alone in the lead too early. On the other side of the road, however, Kittel powered his way to the front to take the clear win.

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