After teammate Laurence Pithie accidentally caused his GC leader Dani Martínez to crash on the final stage of Paris-Nice, it looked like eight days of brilliant work to get the Colombian to his best overall result since coming second at the Giro in 2024 were about to come to nothing.
Martínez came down hard with just over 50km to race after touching wheels with the Kiwi, who had moved out of the line in the peloton and was looking the other way as his teammate tried to overtake him, leaving the GC hopeful lying in pain on the side of the road and clutching at his midsection.
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“This is cycling. Nothing is for sure until you cross the finish line,” said the Colombian via the race’s website. “I had really good legs and everything was under control until the penultimate climb. My teammates were doing a spectacular job. I made a mistake, I went down, and it was quite a hard crash.
Quickly, the race moved on up the road, and the 2:28 lead over Georg Steinhauser (EF Education-EasyPost) in third, he started the day with threatened to go with it, but even after he “thought about stopping,” Martínez rallied, and with the help of Pithie and huge work from Aleksandr Vlasov, they were able to put out the fire.
“I got back up and kept pushing,” he said, “The team did a fantastic job. They’ve been amazing all week long, including today, and this is a podium we achieved together. Thanks to the support of my teammates, I was able to continue and make it to the finish.”
Martínez eventually crossed the finish line hand in hand with…
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