Tour de France: Marcel Kittel describes sprints as 'pure chaos'
Thursday 7 July 2016 20:30, UK
Marcel Kittel criticised race organisers and described sprint stages at the Tour de France as “pure chaos” after being beaten into second place by Mark Cavendish on stage six.
Cavendish used Kittel's slipstream as the launchpad for his sprint finish in Montauban and then narrowly held the German off to claim the 29th Tour stage win of his career.
Kittel praised Cavendish, but said afterwards that the nature of the final kilometres had rendered team tactics useless.
He said: "Cavendish knew where he needed to be and when. I tried everything to hold him off, but I couldn't. It was really close in the end.
"To be very honest, in the finals this year, there is no tactic. It's impossible to ride with a team here.
"I don't know why the organisers do it like this, with downhills in the city. It goes wide, narrow, wide again and every team is struggling at this stage to be at the front.
"The GC [general classification] teams are also holding their wheels until the finish line. It's pure chaos and that's why you can win here with really smart positioning.
"The team only has to bring you forward at a certain moment and that's it, and then you have to go out of the wheel of someone at a certain point. That is it, but you don't know when it is going to happen."
Cavendish admitted that the downhill finish in Montauban had almost caught him out.
He said: "I put the bigger gear on again and I just went. I actually maxed out. I should have put an even bigger gear on, but I kept going. I really wanted it.
"I felt Kittel coming on my side, but I did what he has always done to me the last three years and held him at it. I'm very happy with that."
The Tour continues on Friday with the first of three stages in the Pyrenees, a 162.5km ride from L'Isle-Jourdain to Lac de Payolle. Find out more about the route in our race guide and follow the stage with our live blog from 1pm BST.
