Dan Martin (Etixx-QuickStep) was disarmingly frank about his prospects on Green Mountain, the finale to stage 4 of the Tour of Oman, admitting that he might find himself limited by a nagging illness on Friday afternoon. The Irishman showcased his early season form by claiming a stage win at the recent Volta a la Comunitat Valencia, but has been nursing a chest complaint since arriving in the Gulf.
“I’ve got to be realistic as well – I feel like shit,” Martin told Cyclingnews at Al Sawadi Beach before the start of stage 3. “You can have all the ambition in the world but if your body doesn’t react, it’s not going to happen. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow feeling really good and I’ll give it a crack for sure. I’m here to push myself and I’m here to ride for the team.”
Given the circumstances, Martin perhaps surprised himself by finishing in the elite leading group that formed on the stiff climb of Al Jissah in the finale of the opening stage, but he proceeded to lose all hope of final overall victory when he was distanced as the pace picked up on the flat run-in to the final haul to the line the following day.
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“When you’re feeling shit you’re really not ready to get involved in all the craziness but to be honest we just got caught by surprise by that right turn,” Martin said. “We didn’t expect it, because it wasn’t even crosswind, it was tailwind. It was just that it was super fast. There were two corners and it was lined out, then someone let a wheel go and it was gone.”
Martin can well afford to take the relative peaks and troughs of his Tour of Oman in his stride. While the centrepiece of his spring, as ever, will come in late April with the troika of Amstel Gold Race, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, his victory in Valencia last week marked the first time in his career that he has won so early in the year.
The switch from Cannondale to Etixx-QuickStep during the off-season heralded tweaks to Martin’s racing programme – in 2014, for instance, he didn’t begin his season until Tirreno-Adriatico in March – and his training regimen.
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