Martinez fifth at Fleche

20 Apr 2022

Martinez fifth at Fleche

Related riders

Fleche Wallonne, 202.1km Tour of the Alps - Stage 3 » Lana › Villabassa, 154.6km

Dani Martinez continued his strong start to the season with a hard-fought fifth place at Fleche Wallonne.

As is traditional, the race came down to a final battle on the famed slopes of the Mur de Huy climb. Martinez was well placed by his Grenadier teammates on the run-in, and dug deep to finish in the top five.

Geraint Thomas did a big turn on the approach to the finale, helping to pull back a late attack, before Michal Kwiatkowski and Carlos Rodriguez drove into the bottom of the climb.

As the gradient ramped up it was Dylan Teuns (Bahrain Victorious) who pushed clear to claim victory over Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) and Aleksandr Vlasov (Bora-Hansgrohe).

After his lead-out work, Rodriguez was the next Grenadiers rider home in 37th.
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Wednesday also saw stage three of Tour of the Alps, which saw the team continue their attacking approach to the race.

After Pavel Sivakov 24 hours earlier, this time it was Andrey Amador who went up the road in the break. The Costa Rican finished a close second as the breakaway group split in the closing kilometres. The Grenadier came in a tantalising three seconds back on Lennard Kamna (Bora-Hansgrohe).

The GC group arrived shortly after, with the trio of Sivakov (5th), Eddie Dunbar (7th) and Richie Porte (10th) remaining right there in the fight for the overall with two days to go.