Marcel Kittel (Quick-Step Floors) proved yet again that Scheldeprijs is his race and made history with a fifth victory at the event on Wednesday. While Kittel was the rider on the top of the rostrum, the day was all about his teammate Tom Boonen, who is due to retire this weekend.
Scheldeprijs was Kittel’s final race with Boonen as teammates, and he was happy to send the retiring rider off with a parting gift. The race was also Boonen’s last professional outing in his native Belgium and began in his hometown of Mol. While the race celebrated Boonen, his eyes are on Paris-Roubaix this weekend, his last big hurrah. With so much at stake this week, Kittel accepted that Boonen may want to take it easy to avoid any incidents. However, he was nicely surprised to see that his teammate was up for it, and even helped set him up for the sprint finish.
"I was a bit surprised when we did the meeting this morning he said that he wanted to attack at 500 metres, but that didn’t happen because I said that I would stay in his wheel," Kittel joked with the press in his winner’s press conference.
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"I think it shows how professional he is, and how concentrated and motivated he is," Kittel continued. "I asked him what his idea was for the race. I could understand if he said that it was all for Roubaix and if he just wanted to train here and take himself out of the final to be sure that he wasn’t in a crash. But he went all in for it, and he sacrificed himself for the team for the result, and that is the attitude of a big athlete."
Kittel has been teammates with Boonen since moving to Quick-Step last season, the pair has worked together on a number of occasions, and the German praised the professionalism of his elder teammate.
"I just have to admit that I never really realised what it meant to be in a team with Tom Boonen until I was and until I saw here what was going on around him. It’s incredible really," he said. "What always stood out for me was his working attitude. He’s a very inspiring athlete especially when we trained at training camps in winter. He’s a very focused athlete, he knows where he has to be good, he knows himself really well, and I think that’s something that makes a difference between a very good and a great rider. He definitely is a role model for everybody in our team with that attitude."
Riding a wave of success
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