Lenny Martinez outkicked Clément Berthet (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) in a two-man sprint to win the Tour du Doubs, taking his second victory in three days following his win at Classic Grand Besançon Doubs on Friday. The French rider also claimed the third win in three days for his Groupama-FDJ squad.
Crossing the line eight seconds back, José Manuel Diaz (Burgos-BH) was third.
Diaz ignited the fireworks on the bottom of the final steep climb of Larmont with a solo attack. Martinez, Berthet and a few more gave chase to finally connect with the Spaniard inside of three kilometres to go, forming a group of around 10 riders including last year’s winner Jesus Herrada and his Cofidis teammate Guillaume Martin.
Martinez countered Berthet's attack and the two dropped the other riders with less than 2km to go. The pair worked together on the final dash to the line until Berthet could not answer’s Martinez acceleration in the final 150 metres.
“We made it three out of three this weekend and I’m so proud of the team. We really did a great job,” Martinez told France3. His teammate David Gaudu won the Tour du Jura on Saturday.
“I think that with Clément, we were perhaps the two strongest. We escaped several times together I think and once it was the right one and I told him that we should work together and then there you go. Afterwards, in the sprint, I didn't know what we were going to do but at least we were going to do one and two and it was important to collaborate.”
Once again a major crash forced the neutralisation of Tour du Doubs, 40km into the race so that medical personnel could attend to three injured riders from the Kern Pharma team. After some 50 minutes, the race was re-started with the climb of Belleherbe removed from the route.
A breakaway of 12 riders formed soon after and established a maximum gap of 3:50 before the final escapees were reeled in by a thinned-out field charging up the Larmont.
“Honestly, I really didn't feel good the whole race," said Martinez. "The race was neutralised, so there was a little break in the race. It's not really easy to get going again and my legs weren't responding too well, there were attacks from everywhere. It was a bit of chaos in this race and in the end, in the last bump, I was getting better and better, the closer we got to the line. So there you have it, I'm very happy to get the victory.”
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