Tony Martin was disappointed with his prologue performance in Paris-Nice but was going quite well in the first stage. He managed to sneak into the winning group and tried a surprise attack inside the final kilometer. In the end, the move was neutralized and Martin had to be satisfied with ninth place which gave him the same time as winner Greg Henderson.
Martin was still happy that he was there in the end. "This was a very nervous race, dominated by wind and crashes," Martin said to radsport-news.com. "In the final I was able to jump into the lead group." His sprint captain, André Greipel, was stuck behind.
Martin realized that it was up to him to try for a good result. "I knew I could take my chance only very close to the finish, because there was a lot of headwind in the final four kilometers." So he jumped with about 700m to go and came out of the last corner with a small gap.
But the headwind proved to be too strong. "Unfortunately, the finish line came 100 meters too late," Martin said with a smile. He was still happy about his improvement to the time trial, where he lost 41 seconds. "It is a positive trend compared to yesterday."