Martin and the other general classification contenders all finished in the same time, with the Irishman crossing the line in 20th place. He remains ninth overall, two minutes and nine seconds behind the race leader Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep). He rolled in 89th but moves up one place to 32nd overall. Thursday’s 12th stage could hand a lot of motivation to Martin: back in 2013, he won his first-ever Tour de France stage on many of the same roads. “And obviously the way I won the stage last time, I wasn’t there as a general classification rider, so I got a bit more space (leeway from the bunch).

Source: The Irish Times July 17, 2019 16:30 UTC