The Tour du Poitou-Charentes will be Tony Martin’s first stage race overall victory of the 2015 season – and probably the last one since his pre-World’s schedule from now on only includes one-day races [GP Plouay on Sunday, GP Fourmies, GP Québec and GP Montreal].
Etixx-QuickStep kept the race under control for the German after he took over through the individual time trial. Martin himself gave an excellent lead out to Matteo Trentin, who claimed his second victory of the week in Poitiers ahead of local favorite Bryan Coquard of Europcar.
“Winning the Tour du Poitou-Charentes means a lot to me," Martin said. “My crash at the Tour de France wasn’t that far away so I wasn’t sure of my condition, but I end up with the victory. It’s perfect for my motivation for the World’s. I’m super happy now. I’m also thankful to the team. They supported me really well.
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"We had a great day on this last stage. We had a great week here actually. If you just look at the names, we came here with a really strong team. We wanted to win at least one stage. We won two plus the best young rider’s jersey [with Petr Vakoc], the green jersey [with Trentin] and the overall. It’s perfect. It shows we are in a real good condition for the world championship for team time trial.”
Etixx-QuickStep maintained the gap under four minutes to the six leaders, Alexandre Blain (Team Marseille 13-KTM), Thomas Boudat (Europcar), Clément Venturini (Cofidis), Frédéric Brun (Bretagne-Séché Environnement), Romain Combaud (Armée de Terre) and Ludwig De Winter (Wallonie-Bruxelles). The last two of them got caught with 5km to go.
Angelo Tulik (Europcar) tried his luck. The last Frenchman to believe that a bunch sprint was avoidable was 21-year-old Anthony Turgis (Cofidis), but he got reined in in the last kilometer of racing. Two days after taking his first victory of the year in La Crèche, Trentin doubled up.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
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