Dan Martin gains confidence with early season victory
Irishman takes his first win with Etixx-Quickstep
Irishman 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Dan Martin has gone winless for a full season, but he turned around last year's series of frustrating misses and claimed his first victory with his new 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Etixx-QuickStep team at the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana on Thursday.
Martin's win came on the 163.3km-long stage 2 from Castellon to the top of the Alto de Fredes, where the breakaway had been caught as the climb kicked in. Team Sky kept a flurry of attacks in check for race leader Wout Poels, but Martin bided his time on the 17km ascent, finally shaking his last challenger in sigh♒t of the line.
"With 3 kilometers to go, there was a flat section which was really fast," Martin said. "Many riders used it to come to the front, and at one moment I was badly positioned. Then I moved up, [Daniel] Navarro attacked and when I looked up and saw we are e♏ntering the last kilometer, I decided to give it a go.
“I sprinted three times, and in the last 250 meters, ♈which were in a downhill, I already knew I had won. The victory came also as a result of the excellent job of my team, with the guy🍬s being fantastic throughout the day.”
Martin won the stage with a two-second gap on Jesus Herrada (Movistar) and Poels, whose overall race lead was not threatened by Martin, who lost 1:02 in the opening time trial on Wednesday. The Irishman moved into the l🥀ead in the mountains classification.
The win was the Etixx-QuickStep team's fifth of the season🍌, following a team time trial victory and a stage win in Tour de San Luis, one in Mallorca by Gianluca Brambilla, and Marcel Kittel's sprint victory in the Dubai Tour, and Mar🔯tin credited the success with bringing him into a winning frame of mind.
“When you see your teammates winning, you begin thinking it’s𒉰 possible also for you to do it," he said. "That’ꦍs what is so good about Etixx – QuickStep as a team, the atmosphere, and the mentality. Everybody wants to land victories all the time, regardless of the race, and to get them gives you a lot of confidence."
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Martin joined Etixx-QuickStep after racing with the Slipstream organisation for the first 10 seasons of his career. He told Cyclingnews from his first team camp that he "168澳洲5最新开奖结果:felt reinvented", and it shows - his first win of the year came in his second day of raci𝐆ng with the Belgian team.
