Dan Martin hints at specific reason for losing power on Tour climbs

Dan Martin has not had it all his own way on this Tour and he has now hinted there is something at the bottom of his loss of poke deep into the mountain stages when he would normally be with the very biggest names

Dan Martin (UAE Team Emirates) has hinted that there is a reason, apart from his physical condition, for not performing to his usual standard on the climbs of the Tour so far.

In the stage 13 TT in Pau, Martin lost time to the vast majority of the general classification men.

And while he is not a tester and the race against the clock is the weakest part of his game, his ride looked below his usual ability to get out of a test with his GC aspirations in one piece.

Two days later, almost immediately the stage hit the Tourmalet for the climb up to the finish, Martin looked laboured and was soon dropped.

The two stages together, especially his losing contact so early on the Tourmalet, were completely at odds with his usual capabilities.

*Ewan looked surprised and delighted in equal measure with his second stage win on the Tour de France on stage 16 today; the Australian showed a great kick at the end*

In an interview with cyclingnews, he has now suggested he believed there was a reason for that, though he would not be specific.

"The condition is there, it's just about working out why we have this tailing off at the end of the stages,” he told journalist Stephen Farrand in an exclusive interview on the race.

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“I'm not going to go into details but we have a few ideas
and hope they'll work. It's not due to lack of effort, my legs have just gone
on me.

Now I just want to get back feeling myself and get back push the limits again, all the way to the finish. We'll change our approach to the race and see what happens."

On today’s stage 16, some 170km starting and finishing in
Nîmes, Caleb Ewan (Lotto-Soudal) took a fantastic second stage victory in a
bunch sprint from Elia Viviani (Deceuninck-QuickStep).

The Australian is riding his first Tour as his former
team Mitchelton-Scott withdrew him from its intended line-up last year.

Dan Martin finished in the main bunch, in 37th place and
he is now 13th overall some 11:39 down on race leader Julian Alaphilippe
(Deceuninck-QuickStep).

Martin moved up two places overall today after Jakob
Fuglsang (Astana) crashed out and Roman Kreuziger (Dimension Data) lost time.

Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) was 112th today at exactly two minutes in a large group.