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Ireland's Dan Martin announced a glorious comeback to form yesterday with a nice win in solo on stage six of the Tour de France in Brittany.
Five years after his first stage victory and the last Irish victory on the Tour, at Bagnères-du-Bigorres in the Pyrenees, Martin took the glory on the shorter but equally steep slopes of the aptly named Mur de Bretagne , or Wall
After being boxed the last time the Tour was finished on the Wall three years ago, the hard-hitting climber did not err this time by jumping in front of the pack with 1.200 m to open a hole on the highest point of the climb
Sensing the danger, the pretenders generics Richie Porte de BMC and Geraint Thomas de Sky were the first to try to close Martin without success
. A last minute pursuit by Pierre Latour of Ag2r allowed Martin to keep only one second to win the Frenchman's victory on the line, Alejandro Valverde of Movistar, two seconds later in third position
. -final finale who immediately thought of Martin's wife Jess, who was looking at home and expecting twins in October.
"My first thoughts are that I hope my wife did not get into the work," Martin smiles holding his breath. "It's great to win again – I've had as many second-place finishes since the last one."
Having finished sixth the climb of the previous day and remembering his second place behind a Ag2r's other rider, Alexis Vuillermoz, when the Tour was last on the Wall-of-Britain back in 2015, Martin played on an early attack yesterday.
Eventually, he paid dividends even though he admitted to worrying for a brief period later.
"I was really relaxed all day – not too confident, but looking forward to having a crack, looking forward to running hard on the last climb.
Limit
"The race was so difficult in the first part of the climb, I saw everyone was at the limit and there was more teammates, so why not try it? "
just attacked as hard as I could, I was a little nervous because of the headwind, I did not think it was going to happen, but the legs were there. [19659004] "I could see Latour coming. I do not know what happened – maybe adrenaline – but I would not let anyone beat me. "
After an unsavory start to the season with his new UAE team, Martin showed a timely comeback when he won a stage and finished fourth at the Critérium du Dauphine, the final pre-race finish for most pre-race favorites
while his team 22 teams in the team time trial in Cholet last Monday, Martin's victory places him yesterday in 21st place, 27 seconds behind the current leader of the race, Greg Van Avermaet, of BMC
Froome and Geraint Thomas among those who lost a handful of seconds with Porte, Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) and the duo Movistar Nairo Quintana and Mikel Landa
Great hope French Romain Bardet (Ag2r) and Giro d'Italia last year's winner Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) were the biggest losers among the favorites, losing respectively 31 seconds and 53 seconds.
- Tour de France live , Eurosport 1, 12.20 / TG4 12.4 0
Irish Independent
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