CYCLING – Team Bahrain Victorious star Lenny Martinez powered into the top 10 yesterday on the 20th and penultimate stage of the 113th Tour de France – the world’s most popular international cycling race.
A day after climbing the podium as runner-up in the 19th leg, Martinez had another brilliant ride, taking sixth after 170.9 kilometres of racing to secure an incredible fifth place on the general classification heading into today’s finale in Paris.
Martinez was a minute and seven seconds behind stage winner Richard Carapaz of EF Education-EasyPost as Bahrain Victorious’ best-placed rider yesterday.
The Frenchman thus defended his position in fifth in the race’s overall rankings, led by Tadej Pogacar of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who owns a six-and-a-half-minute advantage over the rest of the field.
Martinez also stayed third in the best young rider rankings, topped by Pogacar’s teammate Isaac Del Toro, but dropped one spot to sixth in the King of the Mountains standings, also led by Carapaz.
Martinez also climbed three positions to 23 in the points table, with Mads Pedersen of Lidl-Trek in first place.
Amongst Bahrain Victorious’ other riders yesterday in stage 20, Italian Damiano Caruso finished 41st, Belgian Vlad Van Mechelen was 51st, Italian Antonio Tiberi was 64th, Pole Kamil Gradek finished 93rd, and German Phil Bauhaus came 96th, while Slovenian Matej Mohoric and Australian Robert Stannard rounded out their squad in 102nd and 103rd, respectively.
Their eight-rider squad, meanwhile, climbed one place to eighth in the race’s overall teams’ standings.
This year’s Tour de France covers a total of 3,319km and 54,303m of elevation across 21 stages.
It is the second Grand Tour of this international cycling season – the first was the Giro d’Italia held in May, while the last will be the Vuelta a Espana, which is scheduled for August and September.
Today’s final leg covers 89km, ending in Paris on the Champs-Elysees.
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