Sam Bennett ‘no longer happy just to be there’
After taking a week to find his legs in the biggest race in the world, the Bora Argon 18 fast man contested the bunch gallop that decided the 190km journey from Livarot to Fougeres.
Bennett thanked his team for delivering him towards the front of affairs as the race reached its conclusion and rued not being able to finish it off.
“I’m only happy when I win in these situations,” he said in reference to how the team’s plan was to try and engineer a stage win for him. “I know the pressure the team is under to deliver results and I was the plan A,B and C today. It’s nice to be up there with Cav [Mark Cavendish — stage winner] but I’m no longer happy just to be there.”
To give him his credit, he was in the company of all the sport’s quickest men, with Cavendish barrelling home at the head of affairs for his 26th Tour stage win.
The Etixx-QuickStep man is only second to Eddy Mercyx on the all-time winner’s list, with the latter still a bit in front on 34.
Behind Cavendish yesterday came his German nemesis Andre Greipel (Lotto-Soudal) followed by a whose who of cycling’s fastest men.
Peter Sagan of Tinkoff-Saxo was third followed by John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin), Alexander Kristoff (Katusha), Arnaud Demare (FDJ.fr), Tyler Farrar (MTN-Qhubeka), Reinardt Janse Van Rensburg (MTN-Qhubeka), Davide Cimolai (Lampre-Merida) and Bennett.
The other Irishmen in the race, Dan Martin (Garmin Cannondale) and Nicolas Roche (Team Sky) were 121st and 171st, respectively; the latter losing 55 seconds.
Overall, Martin is still the best-placed Irishman in 34th at 8:04 but that’s unlikely to improve as his job since falling out of contention for the overall midweek will be to work for teammate Andrew Talansky, who is 19th at 2:39.
Roche is in a similar situation to Martin and lies 73rd at 17:37, though with teammate Chris Froome in the race leader’s yellow jersey he’ll most likely lose much more time as the race progresses and they try to defend the lead.
Bennett is 175th at 48:40 but can look ahead to the next flat stage with confidence after yesterday’s showing.
That’s unlikely to be today, however, as there’s a difficult uphill finish into Mur de Bretagne after 180km from Rennes.
