[ad_1]
- Email [19659009 Daniel Martin admits that he's a little lost this year. After making the big jump from Quickstep to Emirates Team Emirates, the 31-year-old driver neglected what made him one of the most exciting riders of professional cycling. For the first time since he became professional in 2008, he felt inhibited.
"Until this year, I never put myself under pressure," says Martin.
With his reputation strengthened by his sixth place at the Tour de France last year, expectations for 2018 have risen in line with his actions. general clbadification runner. For a runner who was long reluctant to put his full-season ambitions into a three-week run, he knew he'd have to grasp the nettle with both hands.
"I have always said that I will not focus entirely on the Tour de France but it is no longer the case," he said last January. But in the long preparation of July, Martin struggled to collect results to match the form that he thought he had. The change teams had a bigger effect than expected. Even simple things, such as changing sponsorship into nutrition, meant that he had to adjust his supply during the races.
"But I think the most important thing was the psychological aspect," he said. "I realized that I was going into the races and I was thinking, how are things going to happen?" And I've never been to races worrying about the results, I had just participated in races saying, "," said Martin, speaking in Dublin recently, carried by a return to form at the Critérium du Dauphiné last month.
Martin hit the reset button after the Flèche Wallonne, one of his favorite races of a day. position and out of contention. It was his low point at the beginning of the season, but also the decisive moment.
"It was an awareness that I'm waiting a minute, what am I doing this? I'm spending all this time away from home and it's not going well. & # 39; Then, you wonder why it's not going well, I came back and I badyzed everything, "said Ambbadador Garmin. Since Fleche, he has felt to have seen "the real Dan Martin", the aggressive runner who would attack first and think later.
"I will run errands with a smile on my face, that is the sense of the competition and be relaxed and at the end of the day, at the stage where I am in my career, that 's does it matter if I win another race or not?
"It's a selfish sport and winning it's just for personal satisfaction. That's what I like to do – run and run hard and this tactical battle that takes place in the races. "
It's what awaits the next three weeks: Martin begins his sixth Tour today while the 105th edition rolls in the Vendée, an opening milestone of 201 Km. He believes that it is the most demanding road in years, with nine days of racing mainly on the flat roads of northern France, interrupted by side winds, a time trial and pavers.
" I saw all the stages of the mountain. (But) the way I face the Tour de France, is to take things from day to day and not to think too far. Because it's incredibly disconcerting if you start looking at the 18th stage, "oh it looks hard," but there's still two and a half weeks left, I'll get there maybe not even That's the thing with the Tour de France, you can lose it every day. So the goal is simply to survive each day. "
Despite the performance of last year, when he ran a dozen stadiums with two small fractures in the vertebrae, bookmakers do not evaluate his chances for the yellow jersey – 80/1 In besides, with the exception of Chris Froome, the victories of his rivals would hardly intimidate Stephen Roche's nephew.After being dismissed by the UCI, Martin did not want to comment on the controversy of the leader of Team Sky on the Tour, but on the road, the reigning champion will again be the man to watch.
"My goal this year and my goal next year is to me to return to Paris without having an accident, injury or illness, "he said
Martin has never been a win-at-all-cost, it's an attitude that 39 it adopted as a mechanism of adaptation.It is itself, but this seems a reasonable approach in a sport where the results are not always what they seem.
And with his wife Jess expecting twins in the fall, he will continue to approach the day job with a sense of perspective. 19659004] "It's a way to handle defeat and failure, it's just a case of" oh yeah, well, it's happened. & # 39 I think it's also my personality, "he explains," it's only a bike race and maybe I miss results because of that attitude, because I am not possessed, but at the same time I have a sacred life
"Cycling is my pbadion, but it also gave me everything in life, this has led me to Jess and that has led me to that lifestyle that we enjoy. so I would not change anything. "
Irish Independent
[ad_2]
Source link
