May 26, 2021
⁃ Israel Start-Up Nation wins stage 17 in the Giro
⁃ Martin wins first-ever Giro stage, after having won in Tour and Vuelta
⁃ Martin: “I could not believe it at the finish”
⁃ Co-owner Sylvan Adams: “We are proud”
An outstanding Dan Martin wins stage 17 after an incredible fight on the final climb. “This is the reason why I came to the Giro d’Italia!”
The Irishman forced, together with his teammates, a breakaway group after an hour of racing. The chase in the peloton was on, but didn’t manage to close the gap.
“I came to the Giro to win a stage,” Martin said after the finish. “That I joggled my head after the finish proves that I just could not believe that I made it.
“I knew today would be one of my last chances. As I lost time before, I could try to go for my goal with joining a breakaway.”
One minute and thirty seconds distanced Martin from other GC-contenders. At the finish, he had 13 seconds left.
Martin: “I received the updates from the sports directors about what was happening behind me. From 3.5 kilometers to the finish, I pushed as hard as I could, because I knew from a recon I did that the climb would flatten towards the finish.”
Team co-owner Sylvan Adams was watching the final hour of racing on the bus. It was exciting until the finish, as the gap between Martin and his competitors shrunk, grew, shrunk, and grew throughout the whole race.
With a big smile on his face, Adams said after the finish, “Dan said yesterday that he would give it a go in today’s stage. He said this climb suited him particularly well. The team did amazing to get Dan into the break. He delivered and I am super proud.”
Winning the seventeenth stage in the Giro meant that Martin successfully achieved an important career goal. He has now won stages in the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France, and the Vuelta a Espana, the first and last of those races while wearing #blueandwhite colors of ISN.
Israeli climber Guy Niv said after the stage that he was nervously listening to the race radio, but could not hear anything anymore in the last kilometer. “When I found out that Dan made it to the finish, I was super happy. As a team, we kept fighting after a challenging second week for us this Giro. It is exciting that Dan succeeded today.”
Martin concluded: “We had a Giro with ups-and-downs. We lost Krists in the first stage, then had pink with Alessandro and got a few podiums, then lost two guys in one day and now the team is back at an up. We kept fighting and believing, and today it worked out.”
