Fresh from winning the Circuit de la Sarthe-Pays de la Loire, Guillaume Martin (Wanty-Groupe Gobert) is the third French climber after Romain Bardet (AG2R La Mondiale) and Warren Barguil (Fortuneo-Samsic) who is using the Tour du Finistère as a reconnaissance of stage 5 of the Tour de France and as a springboard to La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Twenty-third at last year`s Tour de France in his first participation, including a third place on stage 8, the 24-year-old has yet to reach the fame of his two compatriots, but he`s the only one with the pedigree of a Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner, having won the U23 category in 2015. `I keep it as a great memory and it certainly helped me join a Belgian team as a neo pro,` Martin told Cyclingnews in an exclusive interview in Quimper on the eve of the Tour du Finistère.ADVERTISEMENT `But the U23 version of the race didn`t feature all those hills and it was shorter,` he says, then goes on to describe his subsequent, less auspicious results in Liège. `I started my pro career with a knee injury in 2016. My first training ride was in March that year. I took part in the Ardennes classics but shortly after an operation. Last year, I suffered tendinitis in early April.` Having won a stage and the overall in the Circuit Sarthe, Martin is going into the Ardennes Classics with much more confidence. `For the first time since I turned pro, I`m on the right track towards Flèche and Liège. Having won a stage is great for the morale. `For now, as a pro I`ve only won stage races or a stage inside a stage race,` continued a very humble Martin, who beat none other than Vincenzo Nibali, Giovanni Visconti and Egan Bernal to win the Giro della Toscana at the end of last season. I`m yet to win a one-day race. The lead up is different.
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