German ready to put disappointing 2010 Grande Boucle behind
Tony Martin is optimistic that he can have a much better Tour de France next year than what he experienced this July. His goal is a top ten overall and a stage win. Finishing 137th this year was nowhere near where he wanted to finish, but Martin has analyzed where things went wrong. He will change his training and racing schedule as well as making sure to make proper bike adjustments.
Martin started to have knee trouble early in the season. “I will definitely not change my seat position again in January,” he told the Ostthüringer Zeitung. “This mistake I only make once.” He also blamed some overtraining in the winter for the knee problems that delayed his season start.
For 2011, he hopes to get his racing schedule changed in cooperation with his HTC Columbia team management. “I did the Tour of California in May for our main sponsor with a lot of dedication,” he said. “Afterwards the Tour de Suisse and then a very hard Tour training. That was too intensive.”
As a result he was tired even in the first Tour week and his two goals – a good place in the overall and beating Fabian Cancellara in a time trial – never materialized. “That was a big disappointment.” He was still second best to Cancellara in both the prologue (ten seconds behind) and in the Bordeaux – Pauillac time trial (17 seconds behind).
Martin’s second place on the Mont Ventoux in last year’s Tour de France shows that he is capable of riding the mountains well. His stage race experience is already well developed for a 25-year-old. He was second in the Tour de Suisse last year (sixth this year) and won the Eneco Tour in August of 2010.
He ended the season with a well-deserved break on the Maldive Islands. “But I was in the gym for an hour everyday,” he said. No danger of overdoing it again, but keeping in shape will come in handy for his first race of the new season. On Saturday, Martin races at the Amstel Curaçao race. “A shallow start to the new season,” he said. In July he will aim for more. “In cycling only the Tour de France counts. There, I would like to get a stage victory and a place in the top ten.”
The German championships on home soil?
A week before the Tour de France the German national championships will be held, and Martin is hoping that Erfurt will host it. Martin was riding for the Energie Thüringer Team, before moving to HTC Columbia. “I know all the roads here,” Martin said. Winning the German jersey could certainly motivate him even more in July.
For him, it is also about giving back. “The Energie Thüringer Team has raised me – I still have very close ties.” A former teammate will now join up again with Martin at HTC Columbia – John Degenkolb. “That is a piece of homeland in the big professional world,” Martin said. Degenkolb has already won two medals in the U23 road race World Championships – silver this year in Geelong and bronze in 2008 in Varese.