We spoke to one of Kittel’s lead-out men, Koen de Kort, to get his take on the incident:
“Tom’s alright. He’s got a fair bit of skin off but he’ll be ok — he’s been a lot worse, put it that way. It’s a pity — it sort of dampens the spirit a bit but we’re really happy with the victory obviously.
I came up and stopped when I saw [Veelers] on the ground and then I had a chat with him. All he was saying was “did Marcel win?! Did Marcel win?!”
I already figured he was ok. I just told him to stay down and get someone to look at him, because he wanted to get up.
I think Cavendish could have gone around. He goes for the shortest way and the road was going left and obviously Tom was going in the way. I’ve done many lead-outs in the past as the last guy and you swing off and you just hope no-one’s going to hit you. It’s kind of the other sprinters’ responsibility to take care.
Every sprinter’s got a lead-out guy and you have to take care of these guys. Tom wasn’t blocking Cav on purpose or anything – he was just trying to get out of the way. I think as a sprinter it’s your responsibility to go around. I’m sure Cav didn’t mean to knock him down but I think he could have done more to avoid hitting him.
d4nuk0dd6nrma.cloudfront.net