Sam Bennett travelled to the Tour of Guangxi for his final race with Bora-Hansgrohe more in hope than expectation after repeated illness ruined the latter part of his season. Third place in the sprint in Beihai on the opening stage offered some encouragement, but his travails when the road climbed in Nanning two days later were a reminder that these things always take time.
“I kind of got false hope from the first two stages, because they were super easy and I could kind of take the slipstream of the other guys and try to come late,” Bennett told Cyclingnews. “But on stage 3, I was found out. I was dropped early, and then I came back about four times before I was definitively dropped. I was suffering and tired, and I was really tired the day afterwards. I’ve just spent too much time off the bike due to sickness in the last few months.”
Although Bennett responded to the disappointment of missing out on Tour de France selection by winning a stage of the Sibiu Tour, his season has been something of an ordeal ever since. Illness forced his abandon at the BEMER Cyclassics and he was still struggling at the following Deutschland Tour.
Bennett tried again at the Tour of Britain, where he succeeded only in digging a deeper hole for himself. “When I came out of that, I got really sick again for ten days so that was a lot of time missed, and when I tried training again, I was just empty,” he said.
Sprinters are hardwired to believe in tomorrow, but Bennett admitted he might have been better served by calling time on his season last month rather than making the expedition to China, though the trip has at least allowed him to mark the retirement of his friend and teammate Shane Archbold, as well as the end of his second spell at Bora-Hansgrohe.
“I think it would have been better for me not to do it, but I want to finish on a good note with Bora-Hansgrohe, it’s Shane Archbold’s last race, and it’s a race I haven’t done before, so it’s nice to be here,” Bennett said. “I do think it would have been easier to stop the season and then have a long winter to really build. But you just adjust to the situation, and you make it work.”
Change
Bennett’s 2023 season got off to the perfect start with victory at the first attempt at the Vuelta a San Juan, but he would endure a series of maddening near misses thereafter. Across the UAE Tour, Paris-Nice, the Tour of Hungary and the Critérium du Dauphiné, the Irishman was always in the picture in bunch sprints, but never first across the line.
In late June, for the second year in succession, he suffered the disappointment of being left out of Bora-Hansgrohe’s Tour squad. He absorbed the setback as best he could by winning in Romania, but, unlike 2022, when he bounced back to land a pair of Vuelta a España stage wins, there was no late-summer bounce.
“I suppose it was harder this time, but it is what it is,” Bennett said of his Tour omission. By then, it was already clear that he would leave Bora-Hansgrohe once his contract expired at season’s end, and AG2R Citroën has been reported as his most likely destination. For now, Bennett can only confirm that he has agreed a deal elsewhere for next year.
“I think I’m stuck in a rut, so a change is probably what’s needed, and I’m really excited for next season,” said Bennett, who already has an idea of what was lacking during this campaign.
“I’m missing a bit of my top end. I think I need to build the engine a little more to get to the finish a little fresher, and that way I can get to the finish with 200 or 300 more watts like I used to have. I’m only sprinting with 1200 watts here. I’m still getting close enough, but that’s not the 1500 or 1600 watts I’m used to. I think it’s something I can get back during the winter.”
Tuesday’s final stage of the Tour of Guangxi in Guilin offers one last opportunity for Bennett this season but, above all, it will be a day to fete his friend Archbold, who will serve as a directeur sportif at Bora-Hansgrohe next season. “He always knew what he was doing, so I think he’ll be good at that role,” Bennett said, and smiled: “It also gives me another car in the cavalcade to help me out on the harder stages.”
