After suffering a virus before the Tour of Qatar that led to a poor performance in that race and pulling out of Tirreno-Adriatico, Marcel Kittel’s DS at Gaint-Alpecin, Mark Reef, says he is not better yet, but is on the mend.

“It’s not good yet,” Kittle’s race coach, Marc Reef, told Cycling Weekly. “He’s just begun on the bike again, so he’s re-starting to get better. He’s not completely recovered. It’s a shame that it happens.”

“We didn’t think it was that serious. He was not up in the sprints in Qatar, but those were hard stages and we thought nothing of it in the beginning. Then in the last stage, it wasn’t that hard, but he got dropped… then we thought something was wrong.”

The team ordered star rider Kittel to rest and not ride his bike at all, which seems to have done the big German the world of good.

“We said, stop completely for one and a half weeks and re-start,” Reef explained. “He’s now easily restarting and getting better."

“He got rid of the virus. The coughing and sneezing went away, but your energy can be down for a longer period,” Team Doctor Anko Boelens said. “You can never really predict how long it will affect you. We are going to take a couple of steps back before he rebuilds. Maybe a couple of weeks is enough, but sometimes it takes more time. We just have to wait.”

While it means he will race less before his big goal of the Tour de France, Reef says it might play to his advantage come July as he will be fresher than his sprint rivals.

“You can say it [will affect him for the Tour] or you can say he’s now having a period without racing, a more relaxed period,” Reef added. “You see when guys have a break in the spring, they are fresher in July. That could be an advantage. But only when he’s on a normal way back can we make a plan for the Tour.”