Martin rolled off the ramp over an hour down on the day’s leader, Bauke Mollema, and blasted the rest of the pack away. Fabian Cancellara was the stage’s leader, at the time, but Martin stopped the watch at 1 minute 27 seconds up on the Swiss rider. The German’s time only looked threatened when Bradley Wiggins was one seconds ahead of him, at the first intermediate checkpoint. Wiggins then faded towards the end and Martin’s time remained.
Froome was really the surprise of the day, when he came home 57 seconds down on Martin and moved in to the lead of the race. The Kenyan born rider has been on Wiggins’ side for the first week of the tour, but moves 20 seconds ahead of his team leader. Team Sky now has two riders in the top two, with Jakob Fuglsang splitting the pair. Fuglsang may believe he could have taken the red jersey though; he suffered a slipped chain, just metres after the starting ramp.
