Since then, Great French Hopes have come and gone, without a single success. Romain Bardet came the closest, with a second place behind Chris Froome in 2016 and third place, again behind Froome, the following year. Bardet will not ride in the Tour this year, retiring from the sport after the Critérium du Dauphiné. He has class and courage and will be missed, not only by the French.
Martinez becomes a Tour contender
All in all, the Tour has been an unceasing stage of tears for French cycling fans for four decades, but there may be a glimmer of hope on the horizon. In the recent Tour de Romandie, a 21-year-old French rider showed the smarts, guts, climbing ability and maybe even the time trial legs to eventually become a real Tour de France contender.
I mean, of course, Lenny Martinez (Bahrain-Victorious), who won the queen stage with a combination of racing nous, climbing legs and sprinting ability and beat no lesser rider than João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates–XRG) to temporarily take over the GC lead. Almeida, an excellent time trial rider, beat him in the final-stage ITT to take the race, but his margin over Martinez in the time trial was only 41 seconds, a gap that intense training could sure overcome. And Martinez’s second place in the GC, ahead of Jay Vine and Remco Evenepoel was quite an accomplishment.
Martinez owes much of his newfound success this year to his new team. At the end of last year he moved to Bahrain-Victorious from Groupama-FDJ, and the reason for the move was probably one man, Rod Ellingworth, the team’s Special Projects Manager. The name will be very familiar to cycling fans, since Ellingworth had a hand in the success of one of the most dominant teams in the sport’s history, Team Sky, the forerunner of INEOS Grenadiers.
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Ellingworth was with Team Sky from 2010 to 2019, first as a coach and from January 2013 as their performance manager, responsible for overseeing the team’s sports directors and race coaches. During that period, the British team won the Tour de France seven times, the last time, in 2019, with a young rider named Egan Bernal in the jersey of INEOS Grenadiers.
Ellingworth moved to Bahrain-McLaren in 2020, before returning to INEOS the following year as the team’s deputy principal. He boomeranged back to Bahrain-Victorious at the beginning of this year. In an interview with Bici.pro, Ellingworth said that he was excited to be working with the riders now on the team, especially Martinez.
“I think the arrival of Lenny Martinez is really exciting,” he said. “He had just arrived, he was a young guy and we knew there was a lot of work to do. And you can see that he has progressed very well within this group.” Anyone who watched stage 4 of the Tour of Romandie no doubt saw the big, bearded man who embraced Martinez immediately after his victory. That was Ellingworth and his pleasure in his protege’s accomplishment was genuine. He apparently believes Martinez has got the stuff and he certainly is confident of his methods.
“People tell me that we have set benchmarks, a new vision,” he said in that lengthy Bici.pro interview. “In reality we have introduced into the world of professional cycling many simple things that came from our experience with British Cycling and the Olympic program. Many of these things were linked to putting the athlete at the center, making the athlete the most important person, as we believe he should be. To make sure that everything is done for him.”
But it hasn’t been all smiles and roses so far. For example, after winning stage 5 of Paris-Nice with an excellent climbing performance, for his first WorldTour victory, Martinez finished 81st on the following stage, 8:57 behind the winner, Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), after apparently being caught out of position when the peloton split because of strong crosswinds.
The potential rivals
But that was just another lesson for a 21-year-old rider who still has a lot to learn, but who is very clear about his goal. “I want to win the Tour,” he told Le Monde last October after finalizing his move to Bahrain. And from the beginning, that was also the dream of the team’s director, Milan Erzen. “When I started this [cycling team] project in 2017, I dreamed of getting a podium in the Tour de France with a French rider from our team. I think Lenny gives us that chance.”
Assuming that all goes well with Martinez and he progresses according to plan, the only questions remaining are the riders he will have to beat. The good news is that Tadej Pogačar has already said that he will probably quit when his contract runs out in 2030. By that time, Jonas Vingegaard will be 33 and probably no longer a Tour contender. Remco Evenepoel will be 30, but I don’t see him as a bona fide climber. Yes, he’s very good, good enough certainly to win the Vuelta and perhaps the Giro, but not the Tour.
That leaves the young riders of Martinez’s generation, most prominently Juan Ayuso, who at 22 has already ridden in four Grand Tours. There is also Red Bull–BORA–hansgrohe’s 24-year-old Florian Lipowitz, who has shown flashes of climbing brilliance while riding in support of team leader Primož Roglič. The 22-year-old Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) has been touted as a potential Grand Tour winner, but has yet to show any consistency – and may be better suited for the Classics.
The seemingly tireless Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) has shown extraordinary stamina while riding in support of Richard Carapaz, but he may be turning into a one-day rider as he has not yet been nominated to ride in the Giro or the Tour this year. Other potential rivals include 22-year-old Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) and 23-year-old Magnus Sheffield (INEOS Grenadiers), but so far only Ayuso appears to have the stuff to rival Martinez in a Grand Tour. In fact, the Spaniard is definitely ready to win one, while Martinez needs to improve his consistency and, especially, his time-trialing.
But France can look to the future with a modest degree of expectation because Lenny Martinez is in good hands and may be the rider to rescue French cycling from its 40-year nightmare.
