'We made no mistake' - Kittel defends Rockets' Naples lead-out as Giro safety debate rages

Speaking on the Domestique Hotseat podcast on the rest day, Kittel addressed criticism that the team's lead-out had pedalled into the right-hand corner inside the closing 400 metres and contributed to the crash that took out Groenewegen, lead-out man Elmar Reinders, Tobias Lund Andresen, Jonathan Milan and several others. 

Davide Ballerini (XDS Astana) and Jasper Stuyven (Soudal Quick-Step), riding on the inside line just behind the Unibet pair, were the only riders at the head of the race to avoid the carnage. Ballerini went on to take the stage.

"Many things were said and I don't know, some things I feel were also taken a bit out of context in that sense that it creates distraction and we don't want that," Kittel said. 

"Internally, we also looked at that last corner after everything happened and we asked ourselves why did it happen? Was the tyre pressure too high? No, it wasn't. The tyres are good in rain. The riders trust our tyres really well. Okay, did they brake? Did they pedal? Didn't we take the ideal line? Why did it happen?"

"The honest conclusion is we don't know exactly. And why don't we know exactly? Because it's that 0.5 per cent range that you have in a final like this. There is basically only black or white. One little movement with your ass on your saddle might cause already that little slippery reaction and you see Elmar goes down, Dylan goes immediately down, a couple of other guys go down and Ballerini who taking a different line has maybe 0.3km per hour less speed gets through."

"It's something that just happens. You take a risk to win and you get through it sometimes by taking that risk and nothing happens. And on that day, we took the risk to win, which I think is always what we have to do in these moments. Because hesitating or being scared of not taking the risk will set us up for failure anyway. I think we have made no mistake on that day."

The Naples finish has been one of the more contentious of the opening week. Jonathan Milan, who was caught in the same crash without going down, criticised the choice of run-in on the line, telling Eurosport he didn't "get why we have to try to find these complicated finishes" and that "with two drops of water, we get a huge mess."

Kittel was more diplomatic on the question of course design.

"Throughout the year we have many of these situations and I think we are talking a lot about safety and trying to protect the riders better. It's not about this particular day, but everything is kind of set up in a process. We have the riders' association which is very vocal in it, we have actually a course design that has certain requirements. I think we just safeguard what we already have and maybe we can improve the whole process around safety."

There was a stranger postscript to the stage. The Rockets returned to find a window of the team bus broken, with the cause turning out to be neither riders nor fans.

"After stage six, when we came to the bus, the whole window was broken. It happened because we were, you know, Naples crazy truck drivers, and there was apparently a truck driver going with his side mirror into the bus and breaking the window. We have double pane windows, two layers of glass, so it was only the outside layer. Just behind that glass there's also the shower, so it would have been kind of serious if the window would have been broken completely. But we were kind of lucky."

Despite the Naples disappointment, Kittel rated the Rockets' Giro so far at 4.5 out of 5. The team has built its sprint operation around Groenewegen across the opening days, with Reinders, Matyáš Kopecký and the rest of the lead-out finding their rhythm across stages 1, 3 and 6.

"We started stage one, not really showing what we were capable of, but that was kind of anticipated as well because we had to grow also as a team. We stepped up our game on stage three, showed already a really nice lead out, a little bit of hesitation still there, and then stage six, we really nailed it. In that sense, that was a victory in itself. Only then, the crash, you know, so close to the finish, we will never find out what would have happened in the last 300 metres."

Stages 13, 15 and 21 are the remaining bunch-finish opportunities most likely to suit Groenewegen, although Kittel is taking it one day at a time.

"We have to commit to them. Not immediately stage 15, but it's stage 14 because we have to get our sprinter through that day to be able to sprint. We have to take the small steps first to be able to get to the next possibility."

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