Marcel Kittel (Project 1t4i) beat Andre Greipel (Lotto-Belisol) to the line to win stage three of the Tour of Oman in a bunch sprint, with Team Sky’s Mark Cavendish only eighth.
Team Sky led the chase to reel in a four-rider breakaway with 15km remaining of the 145.5km of the stage remaining, clearly in the mood to setup world champion Cavendish, who claimed two stages of the Tour of Qatar, for victory.
With the peloton together under the flamme rouge, the stage was set for Cavendish and Greipel to go head-to-head in a sprint for the first time this season.
But the 23-year-old Kittel, who won stage seven of the 2011 Vuelta a Espana, emerged victorious ahead of German compatriot Greipel, who regains the overall lead, with Nacer Bouhanni completing the podium.
Cavendish is renowned for his tactical nous in the heat of a sprint but the Manx Missile was quick to admit that he “left it too late” in the Middle East.
The 26-year-old tweeted: “Poor result today. Left it too late & found my path blocked in the last metres. Serves me right for hesitating. Congrats to @marcelkittel.”
Team Sky’s Chris Sutton said: “It was pretty scrappy in the last 15k. It went from a big wide open highway with two lanes and went a bit narrow with under 10k to go.
“I was just trying to keep Cav out of trouble. It was all going perfect. We got lost a couple of times but I was trying to stay with Cav. You have a plan and you try to execute it but sometimes it doesn’t always go to plan.
“It was a pretty comfortable ride for us all day up until then. We rode from the start with Ian Stannard and we pretty much controlled and set tempo all day. ‘Yogi’ was on the front riding like 10 men.
“It’s the first time we’ve all raced together. We’re just trying to work out the little kinks. In fairness the whole team was so strong today – we couldn’t just finish it off. We did the best we could for Cav but maybe came from a little far back. We’ll try again from the coming days.”
Tour of Oman stage three
1) Marcel Kittel (Ger) – Project 1T4i – 3:23.00
2) Andre Greipel (Ger) – Lotto-Belisol – same time
3) Nacer Bouhanni (Fra) – FDJ-BigMat
4) Tyler Farrar (USA) – Garmin-Barracuda
5) Peter Sagan (Svk) – Liquigas-Cannondale
6) Tom Boonen (Bel) – Omega Pharma-QuickStep
7) Andrea Guardini (Ita) – Farnese Vini
8) Mark Cavendish (GBr) – Team Sky
9) Graeme Brown (Aus) – Rabobank
10) Ramunas Navardauskas (Ltu) – Garmin-Barracuda
General classification
1) Andre Greipel (Ger) – Lotto-Belisol
2) Peter Sagan (Svk) – Liquigas-Cannondale +2″
3) Nacer Bouhanni (Fra) – FDJ-BigMat +8″
4) Baden Cooke (Aus) – GreenEdge +9″
5) Tom Jelte Slagter (Ned) – Rabobank +11″
6) Tony Gallopin (Fra) – RadioShack-Nissan-Trek +12″
7) Chris Sutton (Aus) – Team Sky +12″
8) Jakob Fuglsang (Den) – RadioShack-Nissan-Trek +16″
9) Ramunas Navardauskas (Ltu) – Garmin-Barracuda +15″
10) Fabian Cancellara (Swi) – RadioShack-Nissan-Trek +19″
