11th in the Tour, Martin says he is "under-mediated among the French leaders"

Guillaume Martin -

Crossover at the Pullman hotel, not far from the Eiffel Tower, where tennis players arrive on the sidelines of Roland-Garros when cyclists, with heavy hearts and legs, take care of their check-out.

An Ineos on the left, a Cofidis on the right.

Sitting at the reception with his partner, face masked and glasses on his nose, Guillaume Martin waits.

"You don't have the head of a journalist and I do not have the head of a cyclist," he jokes, after realizing that we had been sitting five meters from him for three minutes.

His 11th place in the Tour de France (first French overall), he hopes, will bring him a little notoriety.

In any case, he gives him ambitions for the future.

Offensive debrief with the striker of the first week.

How do you feel after this Tour?

I feel good.

Finally, I feel tired of course because we always come out washed out of a Tour.

But ultimately it is the one I come out of in the best conditions.

I really have the feeling of being fresh on this third week even if in terms of raw results it could have been the impression that I was slowing down.

After that, there are racing facts which can explain why sometimes I lost a little more time than I should have lost.

What do you value the most?

The result or the fact of having been able to run a Tour that has long been uncertain?

Already, there was an objective which was to be at the start and there it was not sporting but really economic issues.

For cycling, for the sponsors, the Tour is 80% of the annual fallout, and we imagine that if it had not taken place it would have been quite catastrophic.

For some teams it could have been downright cataclysmic.

And it is good that the athlete was able to take back his rights.

There was a bit of the Covid context at the start with the tests but ultimately I don't feel that there was a lot of controversy with that.

The race has resumed its rights as it goes.

The bubble was therefore well lived overall?

I heard that we were afraid that the Tour de France would be a traveling cluster and in the end there were very few positive cases, almost none.

And I don't feel like we've been over-exposed to the virus or that we've exposed other people.

For ASO and the French State, it was important to show that we could live with the virus and that we were able to organize such an event, the only one with a global dimension.

I think it's a great collective satisfaction.

Tour director Christian Prudhomme tested positive for Covid-19 via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/kICLZmyOB0

- 20 Minutes Sport (@ 20minutesSport) September 8, 2020

To come to your race.

You were off to a good start in the first week before coming down to the general standings.

do you think about that fall, that derailleur?

I am more of a nature to be resentful, to rehash, and surprisingly this year despite these few twists of fate I have lived it rather well.

Today, I don't bite my fingers.

It's like that.

Statistically, every rider has their share of bad luck in the Tour, so I don't want to do the calimero and say “that would have been better if”, because it's too easy.

What I remember is that I had a good Tour.

I was not far from winning a stage, not far from wearing the yellow jersey, I was on the general podium for a long time… Maybe the raw result lacks a little sparkle, a little trick. more but I really feel that this year since the recovery I have progressed and that gives me a lot of ambition for the future.

There weren't many spectators, the context requires, but you think you've finally managed to put Guillaume Martin's name on the map?

It is not an end in itself but it is recognition and it is certain that as the race progressed I heard "come on Martin", I saw my name marked on the road.

That's pretty nice.

Obviously, I did not watch TV but the echoes I have had is I was still and always a little under-mediated compared to other leaders of French cycling.

So is it because my name is Martin, a somewhat trivial name?

(laughs) Or is it just my way of being, not trying to outrage or feel sorry for myself?

I do not know.

But I think that in any case compared to my results if I can have notoriety, it is not stolen.

And then you may be able to get rid of philosophical questions with each interview ...

It's already the case.

This year I haven't been bothered with that yet and it's quite pleasant when I cycle, when I do the Tour, when people talk to me about cycling and the Tour.

It suits me very well like that even if I don't mind talking about philosophy too much.

But in another context.

How Guillaume Martin tries to make his place in the mountains via @ 20minutesSport https://t.co/eufuqxE1UX

- 20 Minutes Sport (@ 20minutesSport) September 9, 2020

Let's stay on the bike, then.

Pogacar winner on the wire, the very strong Jumbo… What general conclusions can we draw from this Tour de France?

The lesson to be learned is that you should never draw definitive conclusions.

Everyone said that Roglic was untouchable and that he had won the lap before the clock.

I saw precisely the questions that journalists were asking themselves: will Roglic be able to win other tricks then, as if it had already been recorded.

And I think that at Jumbo-Visma too, it was already recorded.

They may have sinned by excess of pride.

So there is no definitive truth.

It was said that the Tour de France could not take place and it did.

Perhaps this is the general lesson to be learned, we can always change the course of things.

Tactically, if we saw a lot of the Jumbo controlling the race, we ended up with a very offensive isolated winner and an outsider like you, who sometimes tried to annoy the established order and who succeeded in the first week.

But it's not much ...

I heard a lot that this Tour was boring, that the tempo of the Jumbo was even stronger than that of the Ineos and that in the end it left little room for attack.

If it hadn't been for Pogacar or me with my means in the first week, the attacks of the favorites can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

There was a bit of Landa at the end too.

So the general trend in cycling, and that I deplore it, is this way of riding like a steamroller with super strong and structured collectives of teams bringing together some of the best riders. 

The Ineos-Jumbo showdown may be interesting in the future because the Jumbo crushed the race with Ineos-style tactics and Ineos sought to do Ineos, which is the same.

And ultimately they failed.

It may be up to them to renew themselves and invent this other way of running.

Two, three of your offensives have moderately pleased the Jumbo-Visma, especially when you had already lost time.

Can you say more?

The first week when I attacked in the final, well, I was very close to the general ... But when I started to go back seven, ten minutes late, I told myself that I could have a good exit.

That's why I tried several times and indeed the Jumbo-Visma told me "no you're too close to the overall standings, we're not going to let you go", and suddenly it's the race, I not gonna whine about it either.

I also see it as a form of respect and recognition on the part of Jumbo-Visma.

But for once, Ineos could release a little more ballast compared to attempts like that.

What I also regret is that other riders who had lost time in the general classification did not accompany me or try to do the same.

There were quite a few riders between 5th and 10th place who were relatively wait-and-see and followed, hoping to get the chestnuts out of the fire at the end.

It was a shame for the show.

The performances of Jumbo-Visma and Tadej Pogacar as well as the few broken records are of concern.

Is the climate of suspicion around doping in the bicycle inevitable?

I think, and again this year there was no real case of doping [interview carried out before the opening of an investigation for suspicion of doping around Quintana].

Usually the other years during the Tour there were cases that arose.

There were indeed these performances, these record climbing times, this very impressive time that raises questions.

The history of our sport, what happened a few decades ago, condemns us to see the doping issue come back.

For runners, it's always complicated [to plead good faith].

This morning again I was in a morning and I was asked several times if I had been offered to dope and the answer is no.

It's the truth.

And the journalist insisted, asked the question again, and I obviously repeated no.

And finally I have the impression that by saying that, I am on the defensive.

While I am simply stating a truth.

I have the impression that I am a bit trapped when I talk about doping because even though I criticize doping, I indirectly feel that I am associated with it.

So these are very complicated speeches.

If I say "no, I don't take drugs, the proof, I am controlled all the time", you realize that this is a speech Armstrong had and that he does not hold.

This is the perverse side of the thing: Armstrong used an innocent speech which invalidates by effect of jurisprudence what a supposedly clean person could say today ...

Yes that's it.

There may be today in the peloton doped riders who use the same words as clean riders to defend themselves.

It is very vicious.

How then to explain these records, these rhythms, which many within the peloton have qualified as superior to previous years?

Containment, a certain physical freshness, etc.?

Already, I want to be naive and I have no other choice but to be.

Otherwise if I started to be suspicious myself and tell myself that the person ahead of me is drugged, I would get discouraged and stop the bike.

And so effectively as far as I'm concerned, confinement has been profitable for me.

It allowed me to rest, to regenerate myself but also to do an altitude training course, which I could not do before.

In my biological values, I saw that I was fresher, that I had been able to progress and I immediately felt it on the bike as soon as I resumed.

But on the rise times for example, we cannot compare values ​​of ten or 15 years ago with values ​​of today.

The road surfaces are not the same, the textiles, the mechanics.

Every day, the meteorological context, the wind, the suction, all that is different.

We are in a professional sport which evolves very quickly and it is therefore normal that things go faster at equal power.

You will now switch to the Imola Worlds with the France team.

There was also talk of the alarming level of the French and the next generation during this Tour.

How do you feel about the issue?

I don't want us to draw definitive conclusions.

In France you can quickly get excited like last year.

But now we must not forget that the previous year was magnificent.

This year, we French people weren't the worst, there were great things in French cycling even if no, it was not as good a year as the previous one.

On the Bernal and Pogacar generations, on the other hand, we do not have an equivalent or we are a little behind, and maybe even the future French talent will come from abroad with Pavel Sivakov.

It's always generational, there can be a gap of three to four years and behind a new generation that comes along.

It's cyclical.

There is something that tickles you all the same in training in France, things that you saw when you were young and that you say to yourself, "maybe they deserve to be improved"?

The Jumbo-Visma, the Pogacar, the Ineos, beyond suspicion, I think they are super professional and know how to optimize performance.

And that, we, in the French teams, we still have work to do on this.

And before feeling sorry for ourselves and being disillusioned, we may have to question ourselves and work more diligently.

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Tour de France: "Before, I didn't make noise", how Guillaume Martin tries to find his place in the mountains

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