Having placed third on yesterday’s first mountain stage of the Vuelta a España and moved up to eleventh overall, Dan Martin has said that he will continue to take the race on a day by day basis.
The Garmin-Cervélo rider is hoping to be able to clock up a good general classification performance in the race and got a morale boost yesterday. This was particularly the case as he had told VeloNation prior to the start of the event that a lack of racing since the Tour of Poland meant that he wasn’t as sharp as he might have been, and that there was a chance he could lose time in the first mountain stage.
Instead, he led the chase group over the line at the end of the long climb of Sierra Nevada, eleven seconds behind stage winner Daniel Moreno (Katusha). “I got a bit lucky as how the race unfolded,” he said, modestly. “With the heat I was suffering early on during the climb but with a really strong headwind, it was quite easy to sit in the group at the bottom.
“Once we got a bit higher, the temperature came down a bit and I felt better and better. The last five kilometres were so fast – the wind turned to be a tailwind and we were really going. I actually thought that we had caught everybody but with about 100 metres to go I saw the two guys in front. I was like, ‘ahh’. Anyway, it is a good sign for the rest of the race.”
Martin finished second overall in the Tour of Poland and was clearly the strongest climber in that race. However he admits to having been unsure how the first Vuelta climbs would go as the ascents were much shorter this year in Poland.
“I was a bit nervous…it is the first time I have done a long climb in quite a while. It was going to be a test and luckily I passed it.”
The race continues today with a 187 kilometre race from Sierra Nevada, the site of yesterday’s finish, to Valdepeñas de Jaén. Martin is wearing the white combination jersey; although he is third in that competition, the riders ahead of him (Moreno and Chris Anker Sorensen (Saxo Bank SunGard) are wearing the mountains and race leader’s jerseys. Even though yesterday’s profile is more dramatic with such a long climb to the line, Martin believes that today’s race is going to be a very tough one.
“I think it is going to be a really hard day,” he said. “The finish kind of suits me..it is more the type of stage I was looking at [to do something] – I will try to give it a go in the finish. It is a really long day in the saddle as we have 37 kilometres neutral [the descent from Sierra Nevada], so it will be quite a long day. It is a 225, 230 kilometres stage with the neutral, and with a really hard finish as well. If the stage is as hard as it seems, it is going to be a real epic.”
Past that, he said that he hasn’t looked at the profile of the stages. Martin wants to take the race day by day rather than getting obsessed about the races as a whole; he’d love to finish in the top ten of the Vuelta, of course, but is also conscious that he is still developing and still learning. Because of that, he doesn’t want to put pressure on himself.
“I think that everybody needs to remember that I am still really young,” he said, speaking of expectations. “Some are getting carried away in saying that I haven’t performed in a Grand Tour before, but I have just turned 25. I don’t think I have matured physically as much as some of these other guys…it is okay to perform in one day races and one week races, but if you look at a lot of the guys who are winning these Tours in the past few years, they are over 30 years old.
“Anyway, I am happy with the way my career has gone so far. The Grand Tours I have ridden have made me strong enough to be able to win and compete in one day races and one week races. Obviously it is a goal for the future to ride GC in the GrandTours. I will just see how this goes and concentrate on each stage…every day I am in the front, it is one day closer to riding general in a Grand Tour.”