Mark Cavendish ultimately ran out of road in his bid to overhaul Alexander Kristoff in the bunch sprint on the concluding stage of the Tour of Qatar, but he did enough to secure overall victory on Doha’s Corniche for the second time in his career.
It took a careful examination of the photo finish before the commissaires were willing to separate Cavendish and Kristoff, ultimately giving the decision to the Katusha man by mere millimetres.
The outcome means that Kristoff won their week-long sprint duel 3-1, but Cavendish had another Norwegian on his mind after descending from the podium – his Dimension Data teammate Edvald Boasson Hagen, who seemed destined for overall victory until he suffered an untimely double puncture in the finale of stage 4.
ADVERTISEMENT
“We’re just happy to have the gold jersey, but of course the gold jersey should be on the shoulders of Edvald if he didn’t have the shit luck yesterday. He should really have had it, so I feel bad for him,” Cavendish said.
“But we’re happy that Dimension Data’s got it anyway: we put ourselves in the front positions and controlled the race. We’re super happy with how we’ve done and we’ve shown we deserve to step up to WorldTour.”
Cavendish finished atop the general classification by 5 seconds from Kristoff, with Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) third at eight seconds. His previous overall win in Qatar came on his last appearance at the race in 2013, when he rattled off four emphatic stage victories at the head of a dominant QuickStep outfit.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/1ThZgDE
No comments:
Post a Comment