When three-time world time-trial champion Tony Martin announced last month that, for the first time in his career, he will focus on the cobblestone classics this season, the entire pro peloton took notice.

Why? Because Martin’s participation tipped the scales in favor of an Etixx-QuickStep domination, from Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, which kicks off the classics season on Saturday, through Paris-Roubaix, on April 10.

Martin’s participation appears to be a move by team manager Patrick Lefevere to fulfill the team’s destiny — to secure a Spring Classics supremacy that appeared preordained last year, yet ultimately blew sideways, like rain in a Belgian crosswind.

Captained by Tom Boonen, the greatest cobblestone classics rider of his generation, the Etixx-QuickStep squad started the 2015 Spring Classics as the 800-pound gorilla. Along with Boonen, the team boasted specialists Zdenek Stybar, Niki Terpstra, Stijn Vandenbergh, and Matteo Trentin, as well as, for a few select races, Mark Cavendish.

And Etixx started off the 2015 classics season with a pair of early wins, at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, with Cavendish, and Strade Bianche, with Stybar.

Yet the team also found new and inventive ways to disappoint, particularly at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, where Team Sky’s Ian Stannard won from a four-man breakaway stacked with three Etixx jerseys — Boonen, Vandenbergh, and Terpstra.

It was a result that left Boonen shaking his head, and Terpstra and Vandenbergh hanging theirs in shame.

Lefevere surely would have thought that tactical blunder to be the low point of his team’s classics season, however the nadir would come a week later, when Boonen crashed out of Paris-Nice, suffering a dislocated shoulder that required surgery.

The team’s star classics rider, seeking a fifth Roubaix win and a fourth Flanders win — either of which would set a new record — was instead forced to sit out the most important events of his race schedule.

Etixx soldiered on, looking to Terpstra, the 2014 Roubaix winner, and Stybar, the three-time world cyclocross champion who, in 2014, finished in the top 10 at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, Strade Bianche, E3 Harelbeke, Ronde van Vlaandren, and Paris-Roubaix.

Terpstra and Stybar raced admirably during the 2015 classics season, even if they didn’t come away with the wins that mattered most.

While French phenom Julien Alaphilippe’s second-place finishes at Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liége were viewed as pleasant surprises — indicators of things to come — Stybar’s second-place finishes at Roubaix and Harelbeke, and Terpstra’s second-place finishes at Flanders and Omloop, were viewed as disappointments for a team so singularly focused on the cobbled classics.

With or without Boonen, so many second-place finishes could only be viewed as failure.

Strengths, and weaknesses

With the news that Martin will be focusing on the cobbled classics, and Boonen healthy, Etixx-QuickStep is, again, poised to dominate the Spring Classics. (German sprinter Marcel Kittel is only scheduled to race Driedaagse De Panne and Scheldeprijs.)

Martin presents a unique skill set for the pavé. Nicknamed the Panzerwagen, after a German tank, he is capable of sustaining incredible power, useful in a domestique role, setting pace at the front of the peloton, or in a breakaway.

Alongside Boonen, the other dominant classics rider of the past decade has been Fabian Cancellara (Trek-Segafredo), who, like Martin, is a multi-time world time-trial champion. The first two of Cancellara’s three wins at Roubaix were solo efforts — late-race time trial demonstrations across the cobblestones. Two of his three Flanders wins were also taken with more than a minute’s lead over the second-place finisher.

Bradley Wiggins, another TT specialist, quickly took to the cobbles, finishing 25th in his Paris-Roubaix debut, in 2009, and ninth in 2014.

As unforgiving as they may be, the rough-and-tumble cobblestones smile upon those riders capable of sustaining raw power. At the Volta ao Algarve, last week, Martin finished just five seconds behind Cancellara in the 18km Stage 3 time trial, demonstrating that the power is there.

Other factors that come into play at the classics are luck, experience, and team strength.

Inexperience will be Martin’s weakness, though at last year’s Tour de France he proved that a cobblestone education is far from essential, soloing to victory on the cobblestone stage (on Trentin’s bike, no less, after a puncture on his), taking the maillot jaune in the process. Seven pavé sectors, during a three-week stage race in July, is not 27 sectors at a Monument in April, but a win across the cobbles is still a win across the cobbles.

Also worth remembering: On the rainy cobblestone stage of the 2014 Tour de France, after riding in the day-long breakaway and crashing, Martin still finished 17th, two minutes down on stage winner Lars Boom. It was that performance that led Etixx directors Rolf Aldag and Brian Holm to suggest Martin begin focusing on the classics.

“If we get Tony in there, and he gets his engine started, no one is going to catch him,” Holm told Cycling Weekly in February 2015. “He’ll be something like Cancellara, probably.”

Luck, of course, is an important and unpredictable factor at the classics, although variables such as crashes and punctures can be mitigated, somewhat, under the guidance of veterans like Boonen and Terpstra, on a team directed by former classics specialist Wilfried Peeters.

The classics also involve positioning, explosive attacks, and, sometimes, sprinting from a small group. These are not Martin’s strengths.

However the classics, particularly Roubaix, also reward team depth — strength in numbers. Terpstra wasn’t necessarily the strongest man at the 2014 Paris-Roubaix, but his late-race attack, with Boonen and Stybar sitting in the group of 10, proved to be the winning move, as no other rider readily took up the chase.

In terms of team strength, Martin couldn’t be in a better position. And that comes back to why he’s participating in the first place; on a lesser squad, Martin might not even bother with the Spring Classics. On Ettix-QuickStep, he’ll be another important weapon in the arsenal of the best team in the race.

It’s not hard to imagine Martin winning Roubaix in the same manner Boonen and Cancellara have won, from a long solo attack, or how Terpstra won in 2014 — the right man, on the right team, at the right time.

And with John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) sidelined due to injury, Geraint Thomas (Sky) instead focusing on stage races, and Dimension Data’s Cavendish and Edvald Boasson Hagen absent from Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne — their squad was not invited — Etixx could well steamroll the opposition in 2016.

“I’ll line up for Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Dwars door Vlaanderen, and if everything will work well I will try to be part of the team that will go to Gent-Wevelgem, Ronde van Vlaanderen, and Paris-Roubaix,” Martin said. “Obviously, I can’t say that I want to win there, but to test myself, to see how I do in these kind of races.”

And that’s just it — Martin doesn’t need to win to impact the race. His presence alone could be the decisive factor.