Bennett struggling in Tour de France sprints, a mental toll? "For him, only winning counts"

Sam Bennett had an excellent run-up to the Tour de France, including four stage wins at the Four Days of Dunkirk. However, things haven't gone smoothly at La Grande Boucle for the Irish rider from Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, who has only managed a sixth-place finish so far. And he's likely quite frustrated by that...

At the start of the Tour, IDLProCycling.com spoke with teammate Oliver Naesen, whom we had also spoken to during the Critérium du Dauphiné. Then, he had expressed his confidence in the Irish sprint leader. We spoke again on day four of the Tour, the day after the first sprint opportunity, where Bennett sprinted to ninth place.

"I'm doing well. The days have been tough and especially warm. But hey: that wasn't so bad for me since those weren't important days for me. I was able to finish those stages in my own Gran Fondo style. So, it wasn't too bad," Oli began. "The first sprint stage also went pretty well, in my opinion. I as the lead-out was at the front where I wanted to be. Unfortunately, Sam got boxed in, so then there's always a bit of disappointment."

"The fact that he had a lot of surplus is nice. That he couldn't sprint sucks"

"In that final, I knew there was a headwind," the Flemish veteran continued about Bennett's first sprint performance. "So, I hoped to stretch it out coming out of the corner so that there was space. Space is pretty much the most important thing for a sprinter. But the wind was so intense that it kind of jammed up behind me. And then you get overtaken from behind and end up boxed in. Sam told me he couldn't pedal for 200 meters during the sprint. That's actually very frustrating."

Naesen continued: "Of course, you can also approach sprints in a way that you're hanging off your frame in the last 500 meters. But what we take from it is that Sam is physically fit and that he has enough surplus to sprint," he also looked ahead to the subsequent sprints, where Bennett - with the benefit of hindsight - finished fifteenth (stage five), twenty-fourth (stage six), and twenty-seventh (stage eight). Later, he would add a sixth-place finish in stage ten, his best result so far. "The last five minutes of a sprinter's stage is no joke. It's super intense, especially in the Tour. The fact that he had a lot of surplus is nice. The fact that he couldn't sprint sucks. So the feeling was kind of in between."

"Sam will need to achieve a good result in the first week to mentally get over it and go through the Tour with confidence," Naesen concluded. After the first week of the Tour, we would thus conclude that Bennett is currently riding with relatively little grinta and somewhat disappointed. "They always say there are eight chances, but even those go by quickly... I also don't think Sam would be satisfied with a top-three finish or something like that. It's hard to pinpoint, but I think for him, only winning counts."