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Majestic Martin goes from heaven to seven at Vuelta

Tony Martin will be among the riders looking forward to an Individual Time Trial on Stage 20 of the Tour de France. (Image: Team Sky)
Expert
29th August, 2013
5

As far as seventh places go, it was very much up there with the best. In fact, I’d venture that Tony Martin’s seventh place in Thursday’s stage six of the Vuelta will linger longer in the collective memory bank than Michael Morkov’s victory.

That Danish national champion Morkov won his first ever Grand Tour scalp was something of a footnote after what went on pretty much from kilometre zero until the final 20 metres of a stage which looked – on paper – to promise very little.

Martin clearly picked out Thursday’s 175km stage from Guijuelo and Caceres as an ideal opportunity to get in some practice ahead of next month’s world championships time trial.

Donning an Omega Pharma-Quick Step skin suit, the 28-year-old German powered clear of the peloton inside the opening kilometre en route to opening up a maximum lead of seven and a half minutes.

After what he later described as a “four-hour time trial”, Martin explained that he presumed he would have been joined off the front of the race by some other riders after making his move.

But such was the robustness of his initial acceleration, no one was able to join him – although Italy’s Marco Pinotti (BMC) gave it his best shot.

Like Martin, Pinotti is also in Spain to prepare for the Time Trial at the Worlds.

Before the stage, the veteran Italian – six times a national ITT champion – told reporters that the largely flat terrain was “good training for the time trial world championships because tomorrow is a good day to recover”.

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But Pinotti didn’t have the legs to reach Martin, who showed the likes of Fabian Cancellara and Bradley Wiggins just why he’s the overwhelming favourite to net a third consecutive Worlds title in Tuscany with an emphatic display of solo riding that bordered on the historic.

With no-one willing to lead the chase, Martin’s lead was just shy of six minutes with 100km remaining, coming down to four minutes with 50km to go.

Now the rule of thumb in these scenarios – with a tiring breakaway and an organised, chasing peloton – is one minute for every ten kilometres.

Of course, if you’re out in front alone – and have been so for more than one hundred clicks – then that gap should really come down quicker.

Considering that one Tony Martin is worth, say, three ordinary escapees, then things kept to script: the lead dropped to three minutes with 40km to go, two with 30km and just less than a minute with 20km remaining.

Game over, surely. When the German’s advantage was just 15 seconds with 15km still to ride – with Martin able to see the peloton over his shoulder – then the carrots looked very much cooked.

Yet somehow Martin maintained that slender advantage and he still had 10 seconds to play with entering the final 5km.

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“I went on fighting without really thinking about my chances,” he said after almost pulling off the impossible.

“Up until the last few kilometres I didn’t think I could win. When there were 10km left to go, I thought, ‘right, time to give it a bit more power’. And it seemed like I might win.

“Really, though, I never thought I could get so close to the victory.”

By the time he passed under the Flamme Rouge, Martin had given up his aerodynamic time trialling position for regular out-of-the-saddle bursts as he continued his heroic bid to hold of the seemingly inevitable.

Just six seconds split him from the pack but there was a moment – late in the closing straight – when it looked like miracles indeed could happen.

While Martin being caught with less than 20 metres to go was agonisingly cruel, the fact that he was passed by only six riders was testament to his staggering strength.

On any normal day, seeing Saxo Bank’s Morkov – who wore the king of the mountains jersey for most of the opening week in last year’s Vuelta – outsprint some of the race’s fast-men would have been cause for celebration (worthy, perhaps, even of a dedicated blog like this one).

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But the Dane’s achievements, however worthy, were overshadowed by the towering Martin, who delivered one of the most impressive solo rides seen for quite some time – certainly of this year’s Vuelta.

In the same way that many will always remember the 1989 Tour de France as the Tour that Laurent Fignon lost, so too will stage six of the 2013 Vuelta a Espana go down, not as Morkov’s unlikely first Grand Tour victory (and a second in five days for his Saxo team), but the one that Martin came so close to winning.

Much closer, indeed, than the six places that separated him from the highest rung of the podium.

As such, Martin came as close as anyone to ‘doing a Fignon’ in the space of one stage – emulating the ponytailed Frenchman on a micro level to mirror what Fignon almost managed to achieve over the course of that entire three-week race, which he lost to his own Morkov (albeit one who was remembered over time) – Greg LeMond – by those painful eight seconds.

It’s hard to think of a better seventh place performance. Will anyone, in the years to come, recall that Team NetApp-Endura clocked the seventh-best time in the opening TTT in Galicia?

Or that Michele Scarponi secured seventh place behind the evergreen Chris Horner in stage three?

“I have never done anything like that before. I will remember such a long breakaway for a long time,” said Martin after being awarded the consolation prize as the day’s most combative rider.

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“I didn’t win but it was special all the same. I realised that after finishing – when everyone wanted to talk to me. Although my feelings are bittersweet, I felt like a winner who was only lacking just a little bit of luck.

“But it was a good day for the fans and the sport.”

Indeed it was – even if seventh place did Martin’s exploit such scant justice.

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