Dan Martin leads UAE Team Emirates in Criterium du Dauphine - News Shorts
Irishman Dan Martin will hone his Tour de France form at the upcoming Critérium du Dauphiné, heading up the UAE Team Emirates charge in the French stage race.
Martin was third in the last two editions of the Dauphine, but is heading into this year's race with modest aspirations.
"The Critérium du Dauphiné is always a good test before the Tour de France, but given that this year there's an extra week between the end and the start of the Tour de France, I expect that my form will be slightly behind with respect to the past years," Martin said in a team press release.
"The training period leading up to this has gone well and my feelings are good, but it's true that this is a very different race. The most important thing will be to get rhythm in my legs, race freely and end it with a precise idea of my form for the Tour."
Martin is eyeing the Dauphine because of its 35km team time trial - the same distance as the stage 3 TTT in the Tour - and the penultimate stage to La Rosiere, which is almost identical to stage 11 of the Tour, only a few kilometres longer.
"The Dauphiné is important also because it's a mini-Tour de France, with an individual time trial, a team time trial – things that are hard to mimic in training – and because we race on some of the same roads that we are going to face in the 11th stage of the Tour," Martin says.
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