Pedal stroke for pedal stroke, Alexander Kristoff (Katusha) continues to keep pace with his 2015 self. After matching last year’s haul of three stage wins at the Tour of Qatar, he continued his successful Gulf campaign on Thursday by landing stage 3 of the Tour of Oman, just as he did twelve months ago.
“I have exactly the same amount of wins that I had at this time last year,” Kristoff noted afterwards, adding with a considerable degree of understatement: “Last year I had a good season. So I’ll hope again for this year.”
With Marcel Kittel and André Greipel currently locking horns in Portugal, and with Tour of Qatar winner Mark Cavendish preparing for the World Track Championships, Kristoff is, by some distance, the sprinter with the finest pedigree in Oman this week, but he dismissed the idea that his win was of any less value because of it.
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“Wins are wins and at the end everyone is counting, saying ‘16 wins is worse than 20 last year’ or something, so this counts also,” Kristoff said. “It’s not a small race, it’s a hors categorie race and there are good riders here, good sprinters, it counts for something.
“There’s still [Andrea] Guardini, [Sam] Bennett’s not slow, he won the last stage in Qatar last year, and there are other sprinters too. So there are still fast guys here and I still have to go at my maximum to beat these guys.”
Kristoff’s maximum here was enough to carry him home by the proverbial street ahead of Moreno Hofland (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Roy Jans (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) at Naseem Park, though he stressed that the winning margin had been deceptive.
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