For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Dan Martin. I’m 34-years-old and I’ve been a professional since 2008. My dad Neil, is a former professional rider and is responsible for my Birmingham accent while my mum, Maria, is 1987 Tour winner Stephen Roche’s sister. All of this makes me Nico’s cousin and probably the closest replacement, biologically anyway, that you can get.

This is my ninth Tour de France and it’s strange to be the only Irish rider in the race this year. I knew a while ago that Nico wouldn’t be here but it’ll be weird not to have him around. It would have been amazing to see Sam Bennett defend his green jersey too but unfortunately he has been ruled out with injury.

Having just one Irish rider here, doesn’t really show how strong we are as a cycling country. We’re definitely punching above our weight at the moment and I don’t think it will be long before the likes of Eddie Dunbar will be on the start line too.

Although there are three Grand Tours on the calendar each year, they are so tough and take so long to recover from that most people only ride one, or maybe two, each year but the pandemic has reshuffled the past couple of seasons to make this my fourth Grand Tour in 11 months.

Normally, it’s only possible to do three in a year but with restrictions having delayed last year’s races, the 2020 Tour started on August 25. Having ridden last year’s Tour and Vuelta and then this year’s Giro, I think I’m setting a record that, unless the calendar changes again, might never be broken.

It’s the first time I’ve ever done the Giro-Tour combo in the same season, so it was tricky to figure out what to do after the three-week Italian race.

I’ve always been pretty good at listening to my body and knowing when to rest and recover but it was a balancing act between getting enough recovery in order to arrive here fresh and getting enough training in. I hope I’ve done it right but I’ve got no idea how the first few days are going to go.

In fact my whole Israel Start-Up Nation team are riding into the unknown on this Tour. We’ve got Mike (Woods) who’s done well all year but never ridden for the overall at the Tour before, so we don’t know how far can he go in the GC. We’ve got Andre (Greipel), who’s won 11 sprint stages at the Tour. He hadn’t won anything since 2018 but now he’s back sprinting well and has won two more races in the last few weeks, so he could win another stage.

Obviously we’ve got Froomey (Chris Froome), who’s been getting better and better all season but we don’t know where he’s at. We’re not expecting him to contest the GC, but hopefully he can go for stages.

Everybody says we are an experienced team, which is a nice way of saying most of us are old. But we’ve got a strong group and a good atmosphere in the team and I think our experience will enable us to at least get something out of the race. There are no egos on the team. We’ve got nothing to prove and don’t feel any pressure.

We’re quite fortunate in that we’ve never felt any pressure in this team. As long as we do our best, the team is happy with our performance. They know we are going to go out there and race as hard as we can.

That’s why we’re in the team. We’re fortunate enough to have a wealthy owner rather than a sponsor and because he raced himself, he appreciates the effort that goes into cycling and that we’re here to try and win races.

A lot of teams don’t have that attitude. They think if you’re not getting results it’s because you’re not trying hard enough. If we’re not winning races, there’s nobody more frustrated than the riders themselves and that’s something this team really understands.

If we’re not winning, they want to know what they can do to help rather than putting pressure on. They instil belief in the riders and instead of negative pressure, we have positive pressure. That’s why I’ve been so happy here the last 18 months and been relatively successful.

Because we’ve been around for a long time and most of us have young families, it also means we have more stuff to talk about on the bus than cycling, which is great.

With soon-to-be-three-year-old twins at home, it’s getting a lot harder for me to be away for long periods. Fortunately at the moment, the girls don’t seem to have a sense of how long I’ve been away. Whether I get home from a three-week race or a three-hour training ride, I kind of get the same reaction. They’re starting to understand it’s now Daddy on the television and not Dan Martin. They’re starting to make the connection. But I think it will definitely get harder when they’re old enough to start telling me they miss me on the phone.

With one day to go to the start, I feel pretty good and, normally, should be capable of at least contesting stage victories this year but you never know after that post-Giro recovery period.

This team have never won a stage at the Tour before either and we’ve got so many question marks about what we could achieve over the next three weeks. It could be an incredible race for us, or it could be a complete disaster.

I’m sure there are highs and lows ahead but I’m old enough and wise enough now to be able to put things in perspective. Whatever I do on a bike, it doesn’t really matter to my girls. Win or lose, when it’s all over they’ll just want to sit on the couch and watch Moana again for the umpteenth time.

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