Dauphiné mountain stage can begin salvage of Martin's troubled season

Dan Martin is looking well-poised to strike at the Dauphiné tomorrow as he's only 43 seconds down overall and there's a stage to Pra-Loup that looks perfect for him on paper.

By Brian Canty

Dan Martin is facing into one of his biggest races of the year so far when he co-leads his Cannondale-Garmin squad into the first big mountain stage of the Criterium du Dauphine.

The 161-kilometre leg today, Thursday, from Digne-les-Bains to the summit finish atop Pra-Loup looks very good for the Irishman, but a host of others too so it’ll be interesting to see how he stacks up.

It’s been a terrible season of bad luck for Martin but if he’s proven one thing in his career so far it’s his ability to turn things around.

His team are desperate for some big results as aside from IAM Cycling who are below them on 99 points, they’re languishing right at the bottom of the WorldTour league table on 135 points.

Though they took a stage of the Giro and Ryder Hesjedal finished in the top 10 overall, Martin’s absence from big races so far this year has contributed greatly to their underwhelming return.

He crashed out of Fleche-Wallone and Liege-Bastogne-Liege while broken ribs in the Tour of Romandie meant he couldn’t influence the race in any meaningful way.

But he’s looked good so far this week in what is a vital Tour de France warm-up race.

In the time-trial yesterday he looked strong and was in the front five riders crossing the line and their time lost to winners BMC was limited to 43 seconds.

That deficit could easily be overhauled today on a day that features five categorised climbs.

The category one Col d’Allos 20 kilometres from the finish could be where some riders force the issue but they’ll more than likely leave it until the final ramp up to the finish, which drags on for over six kilometres at an average gradient of 6.5 per cent.

Yesterday's stage was won for the second day in a row by Nacer Bouhanni (Cofidis, Credit Solutions) after he beat Jonas Vangenechten (IAM Cycling) and Luka Mezgec (Giant-Shimano) into second and third, respectively.

The longest stage of the race, 228 kilometres from Anneyron to Porte de DrômArdèche was rather featureless with a two-man break of Martijn Keizer (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Tosh Van der Sande (Lotto-Soudal) getting caught some 12 kilometres before the finish line.

All the main contenders finished safely in the main bunch, thus there was no change among the main general classification.

Martin was 63^rd over the line, Nicolas Roche was 75^th on the stage but his Team Sky teammate Philip Deignan lost over six minutes.

Roche is now 22^nd at 35 seconds, Martin 24^th at 43 seconds and Deignan is 133^rd at 10:55.

Australian Rohan Dennis (BMC Racing team) leads overall from teammate Tejay Van Garderen but both are on the same time while Andriy Grivko (Astana) is four seconds back in third.