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.
He had started the day in second behind only Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), having finished second and sixth on the two previous climbing days to Uchon and Colombier-le-Vieux.
“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.
"The pace was very high on the second climb and I tried to move up towards the front when I went down and hurt my ribs and my arm," he added on the team's website. "For a moment I thought about stopping."
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.
At its widest, Martínez's deficit on the road was at 2:08, but even with one categorised climb and the downhill run to Nice to complete, Vlasov's efforts and his own gritty resilience to keep racing kept that time ticking down in the right direction. In the end, it was enough to save the second place on GC that they earned with a stunning team performance in the rain on stage 4.
"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 Vlasov, 51 seconds down on stage winner Lenny Martinez and 44 seconds behind the group containing those threatening his spot overall.
Instantly, the pain hit him, and he was again left clutching his ribs after the adrenaline of chasing to protect his place wore off, but the job was done, and he looked back at his previous stage-racing best, a great sign for Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe in 2026.
