Dan Martin remains 7th overall at the Tour of Britain after a breakaway survived on today’s stage 7. The Irish rider looks set to bring his stage race career to an end with a GC result tomorrow in Scotland.
The Israel Start-Up Nation rider announced less than two
weeks ago he was retiring at the end of the season, saying he would ride the
Tour of Britain and Il Lombardia.
It means tomorrow he ends his stage race career – which began in his junior days when he beat Geraint Thomas to victory in the Junior Tour of Wales – tomorrow in Aberdeen.
Today the 194.8km stage from Hawick to Edinburgh
went to the surviving breakaway men; Yves Lampaert (Deceuninck-QuickStep) winning in a sprint from Matteo
Jorgenson (Movistar) and Matthew Gibson (Ribble Weldtite Pro Cycling).
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All of the general classification riders
were in the peloton, 1:51 down. Race leader Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers) won
the bunch sprint for 6th place from Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma).
Dan Martin was also in the peloton, alongside compatriots Nicolas Roche (Team DSM) and Irish road race champion Ben Healy (Trinity Racing). Rory Townsend (Canyon dhb SunGod) finished in a group 7:28 down after his breakaway heroics of yesterday.
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With just tomorrow’s 173km stage from Stonehaven
to Aberdeen remaining, Hayter leads overall from Van Aert by just four
seconds. Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep) is 3rd at 21 seconds.
Ireland’s Martin
is 7th at 1:10 with Roche still in contention for a top 10 on the final GC as
he is 13th and is 2:02 down on the race leader.
Tomorrow’s stage
features several climbs and while the hardest of them is a cat 1 – and is 3.3km
at 9.4 per cent – it comes very early in the stage meaning it’s significant is
lessened.
However, there are time bonuses at the finish, meaning Hayter must fight Van Aert all the way to be crowned 2021 overall winner.
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