Although Tony Martin was expected to win both the individual time trial of the Tour du Poitou-Charentes and the overall classification, he actually took the lead with a comfortable advantage of 37 seconds but completed the 23km long stage 4 course in third place as he lost four seconds to Italian champion Adriano Malori, whose Movistar teammates Jonathan Castroviejo and Alex Dowsett took second and fourth place, respectively.
“Everybody expected that I would win here, but there was a pretty strong wind and I was a bit tired after the efforts I made yesterday”, Martin told Cyclingnews before being presented the jersey of the Poitou-Charentes region. “With the wind, I didn’t hear the time gaps, so I didn’t know that I was one second ahead of Malori at half way. In the curvy finale, I didn’t take any risk.
“It’s OK for me," Martin added. “I’m on the way to the Worlds. After my crash at the Tour de France I didn’t expect to be in super condition here. I have to accept that I haven’t won. I’m first on GC, which is the most important and I will analyze all the data from today’s race. We’re here for GC. We also won the stage yesterday, and I’m confident we can defend the lead tomorrow. That’s the main goal for now. I have one more month to finalize my condition for the world championship.”
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It was a rain-soaked time trial but the conditions were the same for everyone from Monts-sur-Guesnes to Loudun.
“I’m really very happy because beating Martin in a time trial means to beat the world’s best time trialist," Malori said. "It’s a very big result. Especially one month ahead of the world championship, it gives me a great confidence. My goal will be to make the top 5 in Richmond. Tony is coming back from a crash. At the Worlds he’ll be stronger. There will be also [Fabian] Cancellara, [Rohan] Dennis and [Taylor] Phinney has made a great come back, so there’ll be a fierce competition.”
The rouleur from Parma who won the conclusive stage of the Vuelta a Espana one year ago at Santiago di Compostella, expressed some regrets about missing out in the echelons formed by Martin and his teammates the day before.
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