Martin second on stage and overall! – Volta a Catalunya, stage 4
Race report from Johnny Weltz
Today was the big day for the GC guys as the hard 20km climb of 2000m would only leave the best to battle for the win.
We had a very fast start, as right from gone four guys broke off. We did have Cozza in it, but after 20km they where brought back. Then a group of eight riders took off and the field let them get a gap of 3.30. That is when the peloton started to chase. It went on like that for all day on a hard circuit.
At the bottom of the last climb with 20km to go the gap was down to 1.30 to one lone survivor of the break, Sanchez. Then the front group exploded immediately with only the strongest in it –we had Dan and Timmy, as well as Christian for a while.
With 5km to go Dan took things in his own hands with a super hard attack — he was 55 seconds down on the overall leader Valverde, who couldn’t follow Dan! Valverde had a teammate to lead the chase as he couldn’t move, so it stayed a 15 second gap in between Dan and the race leader all the way to the finish.
The early breakaway guy took the stage win ahead of Dan by a few seconds in front of him, and the Valverde group some ten seconds down. This brought Dan to second on GC after a super performance, and as Dan said, really solid support from his teammates!
Team Garmin-Slipstream, stage 4 results
1. Julian Sanchez 4h46.29
2. Dan Martin +0.06
43. Timmy Duggan +6.11
46. Christian Meier +6.53
87. Martijn Maaskant +18.54
108. Svein Tuft
109. Steven Cozza
123. Trent Lowe
148. Mike Friedman +22.52
Team Garmin-Slipstream, GC results
1. Alejandro Valverde 13h49.38
2. Dan Martin +0.15
39. Christian Meier +9.59
59. Timmy Duggan +21.35
93. Trent Lowe +35.19
98. Steven Cozza +37.37
123. Svein Tuft +44.41
136. Martijn Maaskant +47.29
150. Mike Friedman +51.23
From the Argyle store:
Popularity: 1% [?]
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 3:07 pm and is filed under Garmin Web Site, Home Page, Pearl Izumi Web site, Press Releases and tagged with Dan Martin, Johnny Weltz, Volta a Catalunya.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Super stuff guys! The final photo of the race review sums the team effort up perfectly; two young champions with huge futures. Well done to Timmy and all the blokes. Brilliant!
The colors were great today . What an effort Dan. Nice
BLOODY BRILLIANT !!!, – performance (by everyone), photo’s, what’s being said – and the future.
Long live JV’s terrier.
Timmy with some new specks!
Well done Dan. Good luck to you and the team tomorrow.
Put the Red National Champ jersey up for sale like Dan’s.
Fantastic result yet again Dan – but no surprise, role on the Tour!
FANTASTIC ATTACKING RIDING DAN !
And superbly supported by Christian, Timmy, Cozza Svein and all the Argyle Army ..Great to see you hitting Valverde HARD ! It`s how you ride that matters to us Fans and NOTHING beats the adrenaline rush of watching an ARGYLE Attack ! even if it is GREEN Argyle ..
Proud to wear your Argyle Dan and crew here in Lincolnshire England
Good luck over the next few days …A LOT can happening in cycling and Valverde has a history of cracking under pressure in stage races .GO FOR IT DAN !
Well done young man and to the team, Hurrah!
Great stuff Daniel , its great to see you give the bigshots ( Valverde ) a hard time in the mountains and especially while wearing the Irish Champions jersey , we don’t see that very often back here in Ireland . Best of luck and i hope you take the overall win .
Great riding gents! Awesome performance again Christian!
I echo MH’s statement.. I want a Maple leaf champ argyle jersey too.