At the end of last year’s Tour de France, much was made of the fact that Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) had finally reached an age where he could no longer fight for the youth classification, but at the Volta a Catalunya that became obvious for the first time this season.
After Pogačar’s victory on stage 2 at Vallter, he emerged on the winner’s podium to don the jersey of mountains leader, points leader and, of course, the overall leader. The one jersey missing from Pogačar’s spring Catalan collection was the race’s white one with orange stripes denoting the best young rider.
Instead, that honour went to Groupama-FDJ’s Lenny Martínez, the 20-year-old Frenchman who already became the Vuelta a España’s youngest-ever GC leader last September. At his return to racing south of the Pyrenees again in Catalunya, he finished fifth at Vallter.
Martinez’s latest achievement comes in a year where he keeps popping up in the top half of the results pages, and more. He has already taken wins at Classic Var and Trofeo Laigueglia as well as second in O Gran Camiño on the final summit finish behind Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). Perhaps most impressively of all for a rider weighing a scant 52 kilos and often classified as a pure climber, he was eighth in Strade Bianche.
Now the best young rider in Catalunya and in the fight for the overall, Martinez told reporters afterwards, “At the start of the stage I didn’t feel so great as all that, but at the end of the stage it went really well on the climb”.
“There was a little split already and then I got back in it, and I tried to attack several times but the level was really high,” he said about Pogačar attacking about 7km from the summit.
“Then Mikel Landa was strong and went for it at the end,” he added about Landa taking second on the stage and moving into second overall. “I tried to stay with him but I couldn’t. So I just hung on in there, and stuck in all the way to the finish.”
Visibly shivering constantly as he spoke to reporters, Martínez said that in terms of temperatures, at least, it had been one of his toughest days on the bike.
“At the summit I have never felt so cold, I must have changed my gears 100 times with my hands on purpose to try and get some feeling back into them but I couldn’t it was so cold. It was a really hard situation.”
Given such stunning performances at…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at CyclingNews RSS Feed…