Martin in rich vein of form ahead of campaign to clinch Tour of Beijing

Following his superb win in last Sunday's Il Lombardia Classic, Dan Martin will today begin his campaign to win the Tour of Beijing.

Martin was the runner-up last year after attacking too late on the big mountain stage. He finished 10 seconds behind Beñat Intxausti (Movistar) at the end of the five day event, adding to the fourth overall he took two years earlier.

His Il Lombardia form shows he is in condition to contest the overall victory and, unsurprisingly, he has been named as the Garmin-Sharp leader for the race. He has a strong team around him and with former Giro d’Italia winner Ryder Hesjedal also on the team, Martin believes that things should work out better than they did 12 months ago.

“The guys did their best for me but I was isolated with 10km to go on the climb,” explained Martin about what went wrong then.

“Beñat was able to get away because you had three or four good riders from Movistar attack. Now that we’ve got Ryder and me, there’s two guys to go for it and hopefully we’re in a much stronger position.”

Martin has, however, had some complications to his run-up to the race. Team bicycles were delayed in being released by Chinese customs, meaning that he has done less kilometres than he would have liked this week.

“There’s always the challenge of having the time difference and the different nutritional conditions out here, but we’re not the only team that hasn’t had bikes for two days,” he said yesterday.

“Hopefully the race won’t be too hard tomorrow [Friday] and we can get through it,” added Martin.

Also competing is his compatriot Philip Deignan, who is one of two leaders for Sky in the event. He is a strong climber and will hope to be prominent on Monday's mountain-top finish to Mentougou Miaofeng Mountain. If he can do that, he will also be set up for a high overall result.