Martin takes stage and overall title

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Tony Martin of HTC-Highroad stepped on the gas Sunday in the closing time trial at the Tour of the Algarve to win the stage and the race. The German covered the 17.2km between Lagoa and Portimao in 20:53, with Vacansoleil's Lieuwe Westra the only one who could come close in second place at five seconds down. RadioShack's Tiago Machado was a distant third, at 26 seconds.

The time was enough to push Martin to the top of the overall rankings. Second place went to teammate Tejay Van Garderen, who moved up from fourth, and third plece went to Westra, who had been in 17th place coming into the stage.

"It all went really well," said HTC-Highroad sports director Brian Holm. “The course was pretty tough, a few tricky corners, but when Tony's in the kind of form he's got right now, to be honest, that didn't matter much, they could have thrown anything at him and he'll still have done well."

"Tejay also did a great time, but we weren't surprised, we could see from the training camp that both of them were in really good shape."

"Still, we did all the reconnaissance work this morning, the whole team checked out the course, and Tony did it one more time alone just to be 100 percent sure. After that it was just a question of crossing our fingers that they didn't puncture when they did the time trial itself."

The losers of the day were the previous number one and two riders, Stephen Cummings (Sky) and Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank-SunGard). Contador had hoped to cap his comeback after the Spanish cycling federation had cleared him of doping charges by winning on Sunday, but he blew up and finished only 15th on the day, 45 seeconds behind Martin. That was enough to push him off the podium and into fourth overall.

Cummings had taken the race lead on Friday's mountain top finish stage to take the overall lead. He held on to it after Saturday's mass sprint finish, but finished over a minute down in the time trial, dropping to seventh overall.

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