BRIANÇON, France (VN) — Attacking on the Galibier was futile. The headwind down its backside, into Serre Chevalier, made sure of that. Yet Dan Martin did.
“I just wanted to test it out and make it uncomfortable for Sky,” the Irishman said. He thought he’d assay the yellow jersey, just in case it was on a bad day.
“Anyone can crack, anyone can have a bad day. It might be [Chris Froome’s] turn,” he said.
The attack failed. Of course it did. Martin (Quick-Step Floors) lost time. He dropped 30 seconds on Chris Froome (Sky) and more on Rigoberto Uran (Cannondale-Drapac), after time bonuses, and moved farther from the podium. But he jumped from seventh to sixth, too. One step up. To gain, you have to try. And sometimes, you have to fail.
Of any GC rider in this race, Martin seems least afraid of that fact.
“Dan, his mindset is attacking,” Quick-Step sport director Brian Holm said. “Nobody is sitting on the radio telling him what to do. The way he’s racing, I really like it. He breaks his neck sometimes, you can even call it a little bit silly, but I just love it, the way he’s doing it. He’s going, he’s going, he’s going. And basically he dies with his boots on, doesn’t he? Some are riding a bit more calculated, and maybe they end up on the podium, also, so you can’t really blame them.”
No, you can’t. You can’t blame Uràn for knowing about the headwind and simply following moves. You can’t blame him for pushing on once Martin and Yates were distanced, either. You can’t blame Romain Bardet (Ag2r-La Mondiale) for attacking not once but thrice because headwind be damned, the Frenchman in France has to try. You can’t blame Martin for attacking into Le Puy-en-Velay on Monday, sneaking 14 seconds, or testing the yellow jersey on Wednesday, just in case it might fail.
Quick-Step already has five stage wins, three more than any other team. Marcel Kittel is gone, out from an apparent combination of illness and crash-induced injury, but those wins remain. This is already a successful Tour. That in itself is liberating, even for Martin. Particularly for Martin.
The team was always split between GC and sprint hopes, but the split wasn’t down the middle. Martin, considered an outside contender before this race began, came with very little real support. Holm admits that even after Kittel’s departure, the squad he has here in France won’t be much help.
“He can have the whole team, but I don’t think it will be very useful,” he said. He let out a little laugh. “Maybe on the Champs-Élysées we’ll help him a little bit. But he’s pretty good on his own isn’t he, Dan?”
The split has forced a difficult balance. On Tuesday, the attempt to balance led both sides to fall off the beam.
“It makes our lives more difficult,” Holm said of the previously split focus of his Tour squad. “Maybe Marcel would have come back [Wednesday] if he had one more rider to pull for him. Maybe Dan would have made it through the first echelon if he had one more man.”
Still, Martin is quite good on his own. Following a brutal crash, the same one that removed Richie Porte from the Tour, and a 1:15 time loss, Martin slowly clawed his way back toward the front of the race. Barring Tuesday’s crosswinds, he’s been at the front of every split and has been consistently able to snag a few seconds here, a few there. He’s in sixth now, 2:37 back. In a normal Tour, that might be enough for second.
The crash is behind Martin now. “It’s good to actually feel like a rider again,” Martin said. “I don’t even think about crashing anymore.”
Thursday’s stage to the Col d’Izoard is Martin’s last chance to make real gains. He’s 1:13 outside the top five.
“It is going to be war,” Martin said.
Attacking might be futile; it might not be. He won’t know until he tries.
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