O’Loughlin: more to come from Bennett

SAM BENNETT washed his stage winner’s blue jersey yesterday morning to show it off at last night’s club league race in Carrick-on-Suir and his coach, Martin O’Loughlin, insisted Saturday’s victory in the FBD Insurance Rás stage into Clara was the first of many.

The 18-year-old Dan Morrissey rider surprised some when he was up in so many of the sprint finishes and astonished many more when he beat the likes of former Tour de France leader and multi stage winner Jaan Kirsipuu to win the penultimate stage.

But O’Loughlin, who was team manager for the Athens Olympics in 2004 and will be going for three-in-a-row in the vets race at the national championships in a month’s time, was not surprised.

“If somebody told me there were going to be six sprint finishes in the Rás I would have expected Sam to be up in at least four of them,” he said.

“His positioning was very bad. He said to me on Friday he was the fastest finisher the last 50 metres every day so the problem was that he was leaving himself with too much to do. We looked at the profile and saw that it was a straight line sprint on Saturday so I had a long chat with his team mates John Dempsey and Joe Fenlon and we planned to put him to the front with 200m to go.”

Bennett, a sports science student at WIT, won a European junior title on the track last year but he did not get the funding he needed – and which he has proved beyond doubt he is entitled to – when the government grants to athletes were distributed.

Before the Rás he paid €1,600 for a pair of wheels and on Sunday he broke the front wheel which meant that the money he won on the Rás has to go towards buying a another new one.

“If he is not an international athlete tell me who is,” Martin O’Loughlin said. “When was the last time an 18 year old cyclist won a stage in the Rás – certainly not in the modern era.”

His coach insists he still is a long way from hitting top form and the Rás – it was the first time he had raced beyond 90 miles – will bring him on a lot. He is set to join VC La Pomme in Marseilles in July.

“We decided that this was the ideal time for him to go.” he said.

“In the past far too many riders have gone out in February or March – in the depths of winter – and had to ride those terrible races in Belgium, Holland and France. I felt this was the ideal time for him to go, he will be hitting top form and the weather will be so much better. It will give him a taste of what life as a pro is like.

“Then he has the European championships and the worlds coming up and the Tour of Ireland. I can’t wait to see how he will perform against the likes of Mark Cavendish. He has very good bike control and he possesses the raw power that a lot of 18 year olds don’t have. He is only 66kg at the moment which means that the guys like Kirsipuu were all two stone heavier than him. He can get over the climbs as well and that is very important. Russell Downing was probably the only other one who could do that.”

Irish fans will have another opportunity to see Bennett in action in the national championships at the end of June in Dunboyne. He was born in the heart of cycling country in Flanders when his father, Mick, played professional football for Mechelen in the Belgian league.