Dead last on stage 1 of the 2025 Tour de France, up-and-coming French climber Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) cast a woebegone figure at the end of the opening day's racing, crossing the line just ahead of the broom wagon alone and more than nine minutes down on stage winner Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
Martinez continued in the race on stage 2, telling the official Tour de France website before the start that "Yesterday [stage 1] was really tough, I hope today will go better."
Bahrain Victorious have never said Martinez was their overall contender, focussing their GC hopes exclusively on Colombian Santiago Buitrago, with Martinez riding as a support climber. That was indirectly confirmed when the Frenchman lost contact on stage 1, as TV images did not show any support riders dropping back to help him, like teams would automatically usually do with their overall contender.
Buitrago finished in the main group of chasers, 39 seconds down on the front echelon containing Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), with his overall ambitions taking the same denting as Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Remco Evenepoel (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) amongst others.
However, Martinez was reportedly out of the back for much of the day, with L'Équipe stating he had fallen behind even the chasing groups with some 20 kilometres to go - even before the last, crucial, echelon of the stage had formed.
The last group or riders to cross the line ahead of Martinez finished 6:31 down on stage winner Philipsen, and then the French climber himself was nearly a further three minutes adrift by the time he concluded the day's racing.
"I don't know yet what happened to him," sports director Roman Kreuziger told L'Équipe immediately after the stage, "I've not talked to him yet. But as we've said since the start, he's not here for the overall."
"There'll be other occasions when he fights for the stage."
"I'm not worried, he was doing 'l'élastique' - a French term for a rider losing contact with the main bunch and then returning to it on repeated occasions - "and sometimes the peloton slowed down and he got back on."
L'Équipe also pointed out that irregular performances were far from unusual for Martinez, and that in the Critérium du Dauphiné the Frenchman lost over 35 minutes on one mountain stage, only to win the following day at Plateau du Mont-Cenis.
It remains to be seen, therefore, how Martinez recovers from the challenges of the opening stage and whether he will lose ground again on the late hills today of northern France. But to judge by Kreuziger's comments, the team, at least, are far from being pessimistic about his chances in the mid-to-long term in the Tour.
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