Already a winner five times this season, Marcel Kittel is one of the most high-profile absentees from the QuickStep Floors squad for Saturday’s Milan San Remo.

The German rider has told CyclingTips that while he would have liked to have been selected for the race, that he can also see the logic behind the choices that the team has made.

However, for future years, he says he is keen to see how he can fare on the longest of the spring Classics.

“I never did San Remo, so I don’t know really what I’m talking about in relation to it,” he said, speaking this week in Girona, Spain. “For sure, it is a race I really want to do, just to find out for myself how it is.

“That’s not going to happen this year. I am not happy that I miss out but, in the end, we are a team. It’s a hard decision. But I think, in my eyes, it makes no sense to send a team there where you have four leaders. So it has to be clear [how the tactics will play out], and that would not be clear if I would go there, for example.”

Kittel is one of the sport’s fastest sprinters, winning a total of nine stages in the Tour de France, four in the Giro d’Italia and one on the Vuelta a España.

This season he took three stages, the overall victory and the points classification in the Dubai Tour, as well as stage two of the Abu Dhabi Tour. And while he didn’t hit the line first in Paris-Nice, he believes that his form is in a very good place.



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