George Bennett hunched himself over his handlebars repeatedly beyond the finish line of Il Lombardia. He looked shell-shocked. It was mostly to get his breath back after six hours of lung-busting racing, but he also had a glance at the bike computer just to check he was reading correctly.
"Biggest day out I’ve ever had, genuine. Numerically, that was ridiculous," the New Zealand champion told Cyclingnews at the finish in Como.
Bennett champion had spent the day in the breakaway, which took a while to form but when it did contained 14 strong names, including Ben O’Connor, Antonio Tiberi, and Victor Campenearts, and they lasted deep into the finale.
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"We just had a really really strong breakaway,” Bennett said. "It was so hard with the wind so it was basically only top riders in there, and we just pulled all day. Nobody did one soft pull – except for Campenaerts, he sat on for 100k, but then even he started pulling really hard.
"Everyone just committed so hard. It was probably the best breakaway I’ve ever been in, in terms of cohesion and everything like that. Man, we got far but we decimated as well."
As for what those ‘ridiculous’ numbers were, the NSN Cycling rider revealed a normalized power output of 5.2 watts per kilo for almost six hours, and an average power output of 280 watts for almost six hours, which for him is almost 5 watts per kilo.
"Never done that," he stated. “Never done that average. I’ve had bigger peaks before. But the average of that… honestly sometimes in Andorra I do hit that with tempo efforts, but to do it for six hours… and to still be like 50th..."
Not that there was any real despondency in that last comment. Bennett had a smile on his face and had clearly relished every watt.
"I really enjoyed it. This is my favourite race of the year. I always feel good here, and I love racing here," he said.
"These Italian Classics are for me the best races of year. They’re real racing. You need good legs, but they’re super technical, tactical, you need to be a racer as well. And the fans are just the best here."
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