Dan Martin gets one over on all Tour de France rivals
Having finished in 3rd place on stage 3 of the Tour de France, Dan Martin also took 6 seconds on all of his general classification rivals.
He was the only GC man in the top four on the stage that put two seconds into the best of the rest.
Martin also took a four-second time bonus for his stage placing, bringing his total gain to six seconds on the day.
And with some of those ahead of him on general classification not finishing in the 25-man group two seconds back, Martin climbed the general standings.
He shot up to 15th having been 52nd overall at the start of the day. Martin is now 43 seconds down on race leader Geraint Thomas (Team Sky).
All of his GC rivals, bar Thomas and 2nd place overall Chris Froome, are now behind Martin overall.
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It is a very strong position to be in considering one of the three stages thus far was a 14km TT, though there is obviously a long way to go.
“(The) best way not to lose time is to go for the stage win,” he said of yesterday. “That’s what I tried today and I’m really happy with how it went.
“I found the first part of the climb not so hard, but things changed once Richie attacked and lined out the peloton,” he said.
Martin was referring to Richie Porte (BMC Racing) hitting the afterburners on the front a reducing peloton with about 800 metres remaining on the finish climb.
“The sprint was very long, and I knew it was very important to bide your time,” the Irish rider said.
“So I sat on Matthews’ wheel and launched my sprint when I sensed everybody was in the red,” he added of Michael Matthews (Team Sunweb) who was 2nd to Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe).
“I never thought I would sprint against those guys, so to get this result at the end of such a hard day makes me very happy and confident.
“A big shout-out to my teammates, who did everything to bring me in the best position for this finish.”
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