Dan Martin is one of the best riders in the world now and with a bit of luck can really come into his own at the Tour from today's stage onwards.
By Brian Canty
Dan Martin says the opening seven stages of the Tour “couldn’t have gone any better” for him and he’s glad to have made it this far unscathed.
The Garmin-SHARP rider also said he is eager to hit some serious mountains over the weekend, starting today, with the stage headed for the punishingly steep Ax-3-Domaines.
“I’ve stayed safe and we’ve four of our five GC guys still up there, in pretty good nick," he told stickybottle after yesterday's stage 7 into Albi.
"Ryder (Hesjedal) has a broken rib but it doesn’t seem to be affecting him too much so as a team we’re in a very good position and me personally as well; it couldn’t have gone any better."
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“I feel good, today was the first day I didn’t feel too great but I think that was a product of yesterday being stressful and not being able to drink as much with all the stress so I was a bit dehydrated."
“But as of yesterday my legs were fantastic. Today I made a bit of an error when I went for a piss at the bottom of where Cannondale kicked it off. I went for a piss about 3-4k before that and it was an interesting trip back up through the cars with Valverde, having to pass half the peloton but it was a good test for the legs,” he added.
“The week so far has just been so nervous because you’re racing so close to each other and all you need is a touch of brakes in front of you and you end up on the floor. It’s even difficult to drink but you have to find time. You have to get it down you somehow."
"I was looking at the average of the last two hours of racing last night; yesterday’s final hour was probably one of the fastest hours of racing of the year. It was so intense. We only did about 30 kilometres in the first hour, but we still had 45k average at the finish. The last three hours we were over 50k an hour, it was an intense day of racing.”
And there will be no letup today with the contenders set to emerge on the first summit finish of this year's race.
“It’s going to be hard because it 35/36 degrees down here and that’s really telling when you’re racing for five hours a day. I think there’s going to be a lot of tired legs out there today but I’m going to try and do my best."
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“It’s going to be interesting to see how everybody shapes up. All the GC guys have been finishing in the front all week with the belief that they’re good enough to be on the podium in Paris, or to be in the top five or top 10."
"But today is the day where we find out where we’re at and obviously it isn’t make or break, it’s not the end of the world if you do lose time but it’s going to be a good gauge as to who’s going to be going for the win in Paris."
“Obviously there’s a stage to play out and we’re very close to the yellow jersey too so... my friend Daryl Impey has been in it the last couple of days.. we’ve been joking around that I could possibly take it off him.. it would be a dream. Obviously there’s a lot of other guys with that idea. We’ll give it our best shot.”
One man who won’t get the chance to wear the yellow jersey is Martin’s friend and teammate Christian Vande Velde who crashed again yesterday and was forced to withdraw.
“He’s a huge loss to the team and just for me personally he’s been like my big brother,” hailed Martin.
“We always get on really well and he always has a lot of belief in me and that reflects on how I race in the team. He gives me a lot of confidence but I’m sure he’ll be there every day backing me up and giving me e-mails all the time."
"It’s tough luck with him, he always gives me support and his wealth of experience is going to be missed but we’ve still a really strong team and we’ll be racing without him, but thinking about him and trying to do him proud.”
While many believed Garmin had disappointed in the team time trial, Martin said they done as good as they could have, given it was a flat course and they have so many climbers.
“Obviously it’s not my thing but we did well. We’ve got five climbers in the team so we were never going to be able to do 60kph but if it was a hilly course, we would have definitely been there."
"But to average 58 on a course like that, I couldn’t really do much more, purely from a physics point of view. I can’t ride that fast because of my body weight but I felt really good on the bike and it bodes well for next week and the (individual) time-trial.”
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