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Dan Martin - Ireland’s best Tour placing for 30 years
Dan Martin is on the cusp of taking Ireland’s best general classification placing at the Tour de France for 30 years.
The Irishman slipped further away from the top classification men on today’s 22.5km TT stage starting and finishing in Marseille.
He began the day 6th overall and all of those ahead of him, except Romain Bardet (AG2R-La Mondiale), were faster than Martin in the TT today.
Bardet is now 3rd and just one second ahead of Mikel Landa (Team Sky).
Dan Martin started the stage some 2:56 down on race leader Chris Froome (Team Sky).
He was 1:01 down on Fabio Aru (Astana) in 5th and 1:50 up on Simon Yates (Orica-Scott) in 7th.
It meant it was highly unlikely he would climb higher or slip any lower overall today.
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And that’s exactly how it proved; he held 6th and will finish in that position tomorrow in Paris barring disaster.
It is the best overall placing in the Tour de France by an Irish rider since Stephen Roche won the race in 1987.
Sean Kelly and Roche took stage wins and even won classification jerseys in the years after 1987.
But neither of them would finish 6th or higher on the GC after Roche’s victory exactly 30 years ago.
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Kelly finished in the top 10 in the Tour four times. He was 7th in 1983, 5th in 1984, 4th in 1985 and 9th in 1989.
He claimed four Tour stages; one in 1978, two in 1980, once in 1981 and one in 1982.
And Kelly won the points classification in 1982, 1983, 1985 and 1989 and the hot spots sprints competition in 1982, 1983 and 1989.
Roche finished in the top 10 of the Tour de France three times. He was 3rd in 1985, 1st in 1987 and 9th in 1992. He won a stage in each of those years.
Today’s penultimate stage of the 2017 edition was won by Maciej Bodnar (Bora-Hansgrohe). He was just one second faster than Michal Kwiatkowski (Team Sky).
Nicolas Roche (BMC Racing) was 25th, some 1:25 down on the winner. With nothing to ride for he would not have gone completely flat out.
And he will be hopeful the form he gains from the Tour can stand him in good stead for the rest of the season.
Chris Froome was 3rd in the test today, just 6 seconds down. And so he extends his lead at the top of the standings with a procession into Paris awaiting him.
Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale-Drapac) put in a very good TT, finishing in 8th place and leapfrogging Bardet into 2nd overall.
Dan Martin was down in 40th, some 1:52 off the winner.
TT remains a weakness
The Irish man riding for QuickStep lost no real time to most of his GC rivals on the opening stage TT three weeks.
But today’s result serves as a reminder than his testing needs to improve to nudge higher in the Tour, perhaps onto the podium, in the future.
For now though, he can savour a fantastic ride at this race.
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