“He made a lot of mistakes”

Lenny Martinez was an active figure towards the front of much of the 2025 Tour de France, eventually finishing 3rd in the King of the Mountains classification, only beaten by Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. Despite this however, it seems not all within Bahrain – Victorious were impressed by the French climber.“It’s hard to analyse his Tour just moments after the final stage, but Lenny more or less did what we expected of him,” Bahrain – Victorious’ Czech DS Roman Kreuziger detailed to Direct Velo on the Champs-Élysées, seeing the highs and lows of Martinez’s Tour de France performance. “He raced aggressively on several stages and fought hard for the polka dot jersey — that was a real positive. We wanted to see how far he could go in that classification, which is why we pushed him to target the mountains in the Alps.”

As mentioned though, not everything went totally to plan for Martinez. The Frenchman was embroiled in controversy late in the third week after being caught taking the stickiest of sticky bottles before taking maximum KoM points in the breakaway. This eventually came back to bite the team too. As footage was shared widely on social media, the race jury were forced into action, fining both Martinez and Kreuziger, and docking the Frenchman key points in the fight for the polka-dot jersey.

“He made a lot of mistakes,” Kreuziger admits, although he’s not willing to divulge any further information. “There’s things we need to keep working on. But I’m going to keep that to myself — it’s better it stays internal to the team. We’ll work through it all together. On the whole, I think he can be pleased. He didn’t win a stage, but he tried. That matters.”

Despite this blip however, Kreuziger mainly comes out of the Tour with positivity towards Martinez’s future. “This is the first time he’s built into form at the end of a Grand Tour. That’s very important for the future,” he assesses. “The plan was for him to go all-in on some stages and take it easy on others. For me, that’s not an issue. There are things that need fixing, yes, but his inconsistency isn’t one of them.”

Ending the wait for a French Maillot Jaune winner is still some way off though. “We’ll have to see how the rest of the team shapes up and what choices we make for the future. But right now, I’d say Lenny is still quite far from being a GC contender at a Grand Tour,” Kreuziger admits. “For one-week races, yes, he’s already proven himself there. But a three-week race is a different beast.”