Kittel Wins First Stage of Tour de France
The first stage of this year’s Tour de France has ended in dramatic style with riders crashing, a bus parked on the finish line and victory for German rider Marcel Kittel.
Amid chaos in the final stages German Marcel Kittel won the first stage of the Tour de France.
Kittel managed to steal victory away from Russian Alexander Kristoff in a sprint finish.
Afterwards Kittel said, “This is by far the greatest day in my whole life, I hope I can sleep, I’m going to be pretty excited about tomorrow.”
Initially a decision was taken to shorten the flat stage by three kilometres because a bus from the Orica Greenedge team was stuck on the finish line. However, organisers managed to move the bus just in time and reinstated the full course.
Kittel just managed to avoid the crash to win the flat 213km ride from Porto Vecchio to Bastia in just under five hours. However, he would’ve faced much tougher competition if there hadn’t been a pileup close to the end. A number of excellent riders were involved including Ryder Hesjedal, David Jeilleux and Svein Tuft.
Despite his success in the first stage Kittel is not at all ranked by the bookies, there are odds of 949/1 on him winning the competition, so if you think he has a chance, now is the time to place your bets.
