{"id":434699,"date":"2026-02-19T19:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/434699\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T19:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T19:12:13","slug":"this-is-the-year-of-my-revenge-despite-rising-bar-for-gc-leaders-at-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe-dani-martinez-is-determined-to-still-be-a-contender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/434699\/","title":{"rendered":"‘This is the year of my revenge’ \u2013 Despite rising bar for GC leaders at Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, Dani Mart\u00ednez is determined to still be a contender"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a 2025 he’d prefer to forget, Grand Tour contender and stage racing specialist Dani Mart\u00ednez<\/a> had few chances to show his full potential last year, but the 30-year-old Colombian has said he’s determined to set the record straight in 2026.<\/p>\n

Even before the arrival of Remco Evenepoel in his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe <\/a>team this winter, in a squad already packed with GC stars like Primo\u017e Rogli\u010d, Florian Lipowitz,<\/a> Jai Hindley and a fast-rising Giulio Pellizzari, following his disappointing 2025, to some fans Mart\u00ednez was already in danger of disappearing from the radar.<\/p>\n

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But before starting his first stage race of 2026 at the Volta ao Algarve<\/a>, and with a runner’s up spot in the time trial at the Colombian National Championships and a ninth place in the Figueira Champions Classics <\/a>already under his belt, the 2024 Giro d’Italia runner-up is itching to get back into the thick of the action. In an interview with El Tiempo, <\/a> Mart\u00ednez made no secret of his goal, either, to “move back up some places” in what he views as the team’s unofficial hierarchy.<\/p>\n

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“Gaining a spot [in the Grand Tours’ will be complicated,” Mart\u00ednez said when asked if he was aware he’d dropped down what the newspaper called puestos \u2013 which translates roughly as ‘positions on the ladder’ \u2013 “but the goals of the team are clear.”<\/p>\n

“The big aim is the Tour de France<\/a>, and we’re all aiming in the same direction.”<\/p>\n

“It’s the racing that puts everybody where they should be. The legs are what decide. I’m ready to regain puestos in the group.”<\/p>\n

Regarding the arrival of Evenepoel in the team \u2013 and speaking before the Belgian’s setback in stage 3 of the UAE<\/a>, he argued, “everybody knows who he is. He’s shown his potential and he’s been the star rider of the start of the season. It’s clear he’s here to win.”<\/p>\n

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A former winner of the Volta ao Algarve back in 2023<\/a>, as well as two stages of the same race in 2024, Mart\u00ednez put his poor 2025 \u2013 in which he finished 53rd in the Giro and with seventh in Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge as his one stand-out result \u2013 mainly down to allergies and illnesses striking at the wrong time.<\/p>\n

“I had a lot of health issues and I was sick so I decided to stop racing in August, recover well and look to the next season. These setbacks did not let me have a good year.”<\/p>\n

Confirming that he hopes to turn back the clock to his best Grand Tour season of 2024 when only a certain Tadej Poga\u010dar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) could beat him in the Giro d’Italia<\/a> \u2013 albeit by a massive margin, he still had the honour of being ‘first of the mortals’ in the final podium \u2013 Mart\u00ednez insisted to El Tiempo<\/a> that he had plenty of unfinished business in 2026.<\/p>\n

The Colombian Nationals, too, left him “feeling good. Getting second in the time trial wasn’t bad, given I hadn’t raced for so long. We need more sponsorship in the country, though, because the country’s got talented riders. If that happens, we can close the gap on European cycling.”<\/p>\n

As for Mart\u00ednez doing that on a personal level, he’ll be targeting Paris-Nice<\/a> as an opportunity to showcase his stage racing talents both in and beyond the team.<\/p>\n

“This is the year of my revenge,” he stated categorically. “Last year was really tough, and I want to use 2026 to make up for lost time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a 2025 he’d prefer to forget, Grand Tour contender and stage racing specialist Dani Mart\u00ednez had few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":434700,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-434699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=434699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/434700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=434699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=434699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=434699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}