

photo credits @ Le Tour
Lenny Martinez (Bahrain Victorious) won the final stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné today, emerging from an early breakaway group with 8km to go, distancing his fellow escapees to claim a solo victory on the final climb.
Meanwhile, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) crossed the finish line together, the Dane unable to distance his main rival on the way up, with the Slovenian sealing the overall race victory by 59 seconds over the Dane, with Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) rounding out the podium at 2:38 down.
Race Highlights
A hard battle to make a 12-man break
The first attacks came from Mathieu Van der Poel, going first atop the Côte d’Aiton. His first attempt was unsuccessful, but after several more attacks, a group containing Max Van Gils (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike), Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-Quick Step), Lenny Martinez (Bahrain-Victorious), Bruno Armirail (Décathlon-AG2R), Ben Healy (EF Education Easypost), Enric Mas, Romeo (Movistar), Mathieu Van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Alexey Lutsenko (Israel-Premier Tech) finally rode clear after 14km.
From there, they built up a 4-minute lead, however, their advantage fell to 2’30” atop the Col de Beaune.
Martinez surges, Pogacar controls
Van der Poel attacked ahead of the intermediate sprint in Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne, taking 10 points before opening up a gap of 1’10’’ over his former companions on the Côte d’Aussois. Behind him, Romeo led the chase, eventually reeling in Van der Poel just before the bottom of climb of the Col de Mont-Cenis.
The race later exploded on this final ascent, with a flurry of attacks in the breakaway and in the peloton, with Mas dropping everyone but Lenny Martinez who hung before executing his winning move.
Behind him, Vingegaard accelerated a couple of times, with only Pogačar able to follow him in the last 1.5 km of ascent.
Over the top, Martinez was still clinging to a 50-second lead ahead Pogačar and Vingegaard, a margin that he was able to sustain until the finish.