20-year-old French talent Lenny Martinez won his fifth climbing one-day race in 2024, winning the Mercan’Tour Classic Alpes-Maritimes against good WorldTour level riders.
Mercan’Tour Classic is one of the rare climbing one-day races, which always has a strong start list. With Groupama-FDJ duo Lenny Martinez and David Gaudu taking the start, another team stopping the French team from winning would be tough. With 5,006 climbing metres in 167.5 kilometres of racing it is a good test for climbers. Col de la Coulliole (15.8 km, 7.3%) has been the decisive climb in the past editions or where most of the peloton gets shredded. With consistent 7% gradients, it is a perfect climb for w/kg performances.
Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider Clement Berthet spent 3,230 kilojoules for 3:49h before Coulliole, which is 13.29 kj/kg/h. The racing was not that intense for such a mountainous one day race, but the longer climbs still hurt the legs of the riders. Chris Froome in his first race since Tirreno-Adriatico was in the peloton until Couillole but was dropped with 26 km to go and finished 47th, losing 17:40 min. Israel-Premier Tech had brought a strong squad with Stephen Williams, George Bennett and Matthew Riccitello. Surprisingly, there were two crashes on the climb, involving Lenny Martinez, Lukas Nerurkar, Guillaume Martin and Ivan Sosa.
Martinez despite crashing still was the strongest rider on the climb and pushed 5.98 ᵉW/Kg for 42:48 min. Clement Berthet was the second fastest with 5.96 ᵉW/Kg for 42:54 min, while Sosa, Bennett, Vanhoucke and Riccitello group lost 19 seconds on the climb to Martinez with 5.90 ᵉW/Kg. It was a tailwind on climb but the Richie Porte record was not broken. Porte in the 2017 Paris-Nice Stage 7 did Coulloile in 41:51 min, averaging 6.15 ᵉW/Kg – 57 seconds faster than Martinez in 2024. In Paris-Nice 2023 and MercanTour Classic 2022, the climbing times were over a minute slower than in 2024.