Top quality ride by Dan Martin in Alps but Simon Yates wins | Video

Dan Martin has put in a fantastic performance on the short and hard stage 2 at Tour of the Alps to take 3rd place and ride himself into contention for the overall.

Ireland's Martin (Israel Start-Up Nation) proved one of the very strongest riders in the field in the wake of Simon Yates (BikeExchange) lighting up the stage with his winning attack. While nobody could match Yates in the end, Martin will be very happy with his ride and it suggests he is coming into great form ahead of the Giro d'Italia.

Yates won solo today by 41 seconds from Pavel Sivakov (Ineos Grenadiers) after those two proved the strongest in the finale. However, Martin was in the next group on the road, which consisted of three riders and was 58 seconds down on Yates and just 17 seconds down on Sivakov.

Martin took the sprint from his group for 3rd on the stage, with Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech) in 4th and Jefferson Alexander Cepeda (Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec) placing 5th.

After Dan Martin had crossed the finish line in Feichten im Kaunertal at the end of 121.5km of racing, some 19 seconds elapsed before the next two finishers arrived; Jai Hindley (Team DSM) in 6th and Hugh Carthy (EF Education-Nippo) 7th.

The stage result, and the fact yesterday's stage 1 winner Gianni Moscon (Ineos Grenadiers) finished well down today, means Yates takes the race lead after a dominant performance and now leads by 45 seconds from Sivakov with Ireland's Martin in 3rd at 1:04.

Related News

Lara Gillespie attacks Dolomite stage as Giro hits high mountains

Video - Italy's hero Balsamo mobbed mid-stage during Giro TT

The only other Irish rider in the race, Nicolas Roche of Team DSM, finished in 32nd place today some 3:11 behind stage winner and new race leader Yates.

Today Yates dominated the final climb, Piller Sattel, by attacking and forcing a quality front group to go clear, which also included Nairo Quintana (Arkéa-Samsic), Pavel Sivakov (Ineos Grenadiers) and Hugh Carthy (EF Education-Nippo).

Once those four were clear, Yates’s power in the final couple of kilometres of the climb was too much for the others to contend with and he dropped his rivals. Sivakov survived alone behind Yates on the road for 2nd place and Dan Martin proved the strongest of the rest to come through for 3rd place on a day when the hard terrain saw the field explode.