Marcel Kittel's second sprint victory at the Dubai Tour was much more chaotic than his first, but the German says he took more enjoyment from pulling out a winning effort, despite a late push to reach the front of the race.
On stage 1, Kittel's sprint win came after a clinical demonstration by his high-speed Quick-Step Floors lead-out train. Stage 2 to Ras al Khaimah on the coast north of the Dubai metropolis offered little opportunity to repeat the team effort, and Kittel was well behind as Trek-Segafredo would up the sprint for John Degenkolb.
But just in the nick of time, Kittel's teammate Fabio Sabatini intuitively veered to the left and dragged the German up the outside in the final kilometre. Kittel then opened up his power and speed and had clear run to the line to take the stage over Dylan Groenewegen (LottoNl-Jumbo).
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"I can say I really liked the way we won today," Kittel said with pride.
"There was a moment when you think: 'It's almost over'. But today proved that's the wrong way to think about it. One of my old sport directors always said: 'Always finish at the finish line.' That's very simple, but also very true because until you reach the finish, you can always fight for the victory. That mentality kept me in the hunt for victory today. It's nice to win when you can jump from wheel to wheel."
"Today was just a different finale, there was no possibility to stretch out the peloton before the finish. As a team we came really late into the last corner and that didn't give us chance to do a pure lead out like yesterday. But we were still able to adapt to the situation. Fabio Sabatini had to go at 1.5km from finish. It was chaos but he still managed to bring me back up when it mattered. It was still very good for us."
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