Martin third on stage, moving up GC – Volta a Catalunya, stage 3

Race report from Dan Martin

It was super hot today, and our team was incredible keeping me stocked up with bidons; and then putting me fifth wheel into the climb. I was feeling really good, and with 3km to go of the last climb it was basically a series of 15% 500m long ramps with descents in between — meaning flat out sprints which blew the group up. I yo-yoed back and forth off the leading five (Valverde, De la Fuente, Marchante, Zzubeldia and Tondo) and made one last sprint to get back on the last 100m.

The descent was super-fast and technical. Timmy flew off the road into a bed of thorns but will live to fight another luckily, and many other riders hit the floor, trying to get back to my group as we lined up the sprint.

I felt really good for it, took Valverde’s wheel but there was no 500m to go sign, and next thing I knew we had 200m to go! With three corners it meant nobody was overtaking anybody. Tomorrow is another super-hard and hot day and hopefully the climb will suit me better then the sprint training of today!

Race report from Johnny Weltz

After a very fast start from the ocean side towards the mountains — where Svein and Mike had been in several attacks without success — a group of four riders took of. It fit in our plans as the group was easy to control and it gave some work to Valverde’s team. It rolled on like that for most of the day in a terrain who was pretty hard and with temp. around 30 degrees.

So when hitting the last two cat. 1 climbs people where starting to hurt. We still had our three climbers in the favorite’s group. Moving on towards the top of the last climb there a group of seven formed with the strongest in the race, among them was Dan. We had trained on the course so he knew the fast descent in to the finish, which gave him the advantage of playing the sprint in the best condition.

He came in third which also brought him all up on the GC. So with just a few seconds off of the race leader and with the queen stage in mind tomorrow into andorra, everything is possible — for he is really flying right now!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Garmin Web Site, Home Page, Race Reports and tagged with Dan Martin, Johnny Weltz, Volta a Catalunya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.