Tour of Beijing stage 2: Tony Martin wins alone

Tony Martin (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) took a potentially decisive step towards retaining his Tour of Beijing title when he soloed to victory on stage two to Mentougou, taking a firm grasp of the overall standings in the process.

On a short but rugged stage that saw the peloton skirt the Xi Mountains before looping back towards Mentougou, Martin rolled with the punches that were dealt on the day’s three categorised climbs before delivering a hammer blow of his own at the top of the final descent to win by 46 seconds.

Martin had been off the front of the race since the spectacular first category climb of Mapaoquan at the midway point, when Dan Martin’s (Garmin-Sharp) forcing helped an elite 12-man group go clear, with Ryder Hesjedal (Garmin-Sharp), Rinaldo Nocentini (Ag2r-La Mondiale), Igor Anton (Euskaltel-Euskadi) and Steven Kruijswijk (Rabobank) among those aboard.

Their lead fluctuated around the minute mark for much of the remainder of the stage, and while a flurry of attacks on the final climb to Dong Fang Tunnel fractured the break’s unity, they remained together until Tom Jelte Slagter (Rabobank) led them over the summit with 25km still to race. At the top of the descent, Tony Martin drifted to the front, and when a small gap opened behind him after the first couple of bends, he didn’t need a second invitation to open the throttle.

“In the end, there was a descent with a lot of corners and suddenly there was a gap behind me to the other guys,” Martin said matter-of-factly. “I knew there were only about 20km to the finish at that point, so I decided to try and take my chance.”

Easier said than done, but then after a difficult opening to the season, Martin has regained the vim and vigour of 2011 in the closing months of the campaign. His morale on a high after retaining his world time trial crown in Valkenburg last month, Martin simply put his head down on the sinuous descent, reasoning that the chasers behind would struggle to organise the pursuit.

“When there’s one guy in front, sometimes everyone behind just looks at each other instead of working together,” he said. “They don’t know if they should chase or if they should try to save themselves for their own chances later on. I could just go full gas as I’m in really good shape.”

Already at full gas, Martin seemed to open the after-burners on the flat run-in to the finish in Mentougou, where even a brisk headwind couldn’t halt his progress and his lead began to stretch out beyond 30 seconds. His erstwhile breakaway companions’ attentions were already switching from the lost cause ahead of them to a larger group of chasers behind. Such was Martin’s ease, meanwhile, he even had time to salute the television cameras during his final cruise to the finish line.

When the chasers reached the finishing straight, the two groups had almost merged. Francesco Gavazzi (Astana) and Eros Capecchi (Liquigas-Cannondale) were among those to make the juncture before the line, and the Italian pair duly took the sprint for second and third behind Martin.

By that point, Martin had already accepted the congratulations of his manager Patrick Lefevere, a late arrival in China, and was making his way towards the podium to take possession of the red jersey. With an overall lead of 50 seconds, the German finds himself in a powerful position. “It’s good to have a gap of almost one minute now as tomorrow is a hard uphill finish,” he warned. The Great Wall awaits.

Houanard

The atmosphere at the beginning of the stage was tempered by the overnight news that Steve Houanard (Ag2r-La Mondiale) had returned a positive test for EPO before travelling to the Tour of Beijing. Houanard had been shepherded to the airport in the early hours of Wednesday morning – though not before insisting to his directeurs sportifs that he was innocent – and his teammates were only informed of the matter when they awoke at 7am.

Once the racing began, a five-man break featuring Juan Manuel Garate (Rabobank), José Ivan Gutierrez (Movistar), Maxim Belkov (Katusha), David Tanner (Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank) and Mathias Frank (BMC) went clear. The quintet opened up a lead of over three minutes at one point, but with Euskaltel-Euskadi leading the pursuit, the peloton was within sight by the time they reached the day’s first climb.

The trek to Mapaoquan provides a hauntingly beautiful backdrop, with the distant skyscrapers of Beijing gradually all but disappearing from sight as the road pitches upwards. The 10 kilometre pass was worthy of any race, but it was jarring that there were just two spectators on the roadside on the way up the climb, with a just another smattering of hardy souls near the summit.

But while there may not have been an audience on hand to witness it, the peloton put on a spectacle on the way up the climb, with the Garmin-Sharp pair of Hesjedal and Dan Martin seizing the initiative, bringing Anton, Samuel Sanchez, Gork Verdugo (Euskaltel-Euskadi), Tony Martin, Kruijswijk, Rui Cosa (Movistar), Sylvain Georges and Nocentini (Ag2r-La Mondiale) with them, while Tanner, Frank and Garate survived from the day’s initial break.

Dan Martin led over the summit and repeated the feat over the 3rd category Gao Ya Kou to take control of the king of the mountains classification. Both the Irishman and his teammate Hesjedal would later be among the attackers to force their way clear on the final climb, but nobody was able break the deadlock. Instead, the stage was set for Tony Martin, who used his guile to sniff out an opportunity and then brute force to ensure he made it count.

“If there is no time trial, you have to do your own one,” he said. “I had a very, very small chance today but I took it."