Giant play down Kittel departure fears

UTRECHT, Netherlands: German team Giant-Alpecin insist star sprinter Marcel Kittel will still be with them next year despite his disappointment at missing the Tour de France.
Kittel, 27, has not hidden his feelings since being overlooked for the Giant Tour squad as his season has been effected by illness.
Having won four stages in each of the previous two editions of the Grand Boucle, Kittel expected to be part of the Giant squad this time around, but his team decided he wasn’t fit enough.
It had led to suggestions there would be a rupture in the thus-far highly profitable relationship between team and star, but Giant coach Christian Guiberteau insisted they would continue together.
“For any rider the ultimate aim is to be at the Tour. If he hadn’t been disappointed I’d have been disappointed in him,” said the Frenchman.
“It was a very difficult choice for the sports direction team, very tough, especially for a rider that has brought us so much success and advanced the team through his results.
“It was a painful decision but the reality is he was ill, he took a long time to come back and he’s disappointed, but that’s normal.
“Of course Marcel will still be with us next year, everyone would like to have a great sprinter like him but it’s true it’s very difficult for him not to be at the Tour.
“But from the team’s perspective, there are no doubts for the future.”
Guiberteau also claimed that without Kittel, the team would actually have more opportunities to win stages, although those would be spread out across a number of riders.
“With Marcel, believe me it would have been very difficult to win four stages with the profile of the course. You can see the profiles exactly.
“Along the Norman coast you can have breaks in the peloton, also from the second stage with the wind there can be break and you don’t have a sprint.
Degenkolb, who won both Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo — two of the most prestigious one-day classics — earlier this year, will have a lot of expectation on his shoulders, but Guiberteau believes several stages suit him.
“He gets over short climbs, he’s a sprinter with great classics qualities — he’s becoming a classics specialist.”