{"id":198517,"date":"2025-05-07T13:37:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T13:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/?p=198517"},"modified":"2025-05-07T13:37:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T13:37:16","slug":"is-lenny-martinez-the-bona-fide-great-french-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.welovecycling.com\/wide\/2025\/05\/07\/is-lenny-martinez-the-bona-fide-great-french-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Lenny Martinez the Bona Fide Great French Hope?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a question every cycling fan should know the answer to: How long has it been since a French rider has won France\u2019s most prestigious sporting event, the Tour de France? That\u2019s right, 40 years. Forty! Bernard Hinault was the last French rider to win the Tour, in 1985, the last of his five Tour yellow jerseys.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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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 Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9. He has class and courage and will be missed, not only by the French.<\/p>\n

Martinez becomes a Tour contender<\/strong><\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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 Jo\u00e3o Almeida (UAE Team Emirates\u2013XRG) 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\u2019s second place in the GC, ahead of Jay Vine and Remco Evenepoel was quite an accomplishment.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s history, Team Sky, the forerunner of INEOS Grenadiers.<\/p>\n

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A post shared by Lenny Martinez (@lennymrtz)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n