Sam Bennett has
paid tribute to his Deceuninck-QuickStep team mates
after their lead-out helped him secure his fourth victory of the season today
at Paris-Nice, but complained some of the riders in the race were “fixated” on
his lead-out.
He said the next stages at Paris-Nice would be “strength and conditioning” training for him before he went to Milan-Sanremo, though tomorrow's stage is not overly hilly.
Bennett said the job done by his team today in the finale was so “powerful and perfect” it was “killing my legs”. And after such an “awesome” lead-out he was glad he could finish the performance and win the stage.
The 30-year-old Irishman wore the green jersey today as the points classification leader, Primoz Roglic (Jumbo Visma), was in yellow. However, after his win today - ahead of Nacer Bouhanni (Arkea Samsic) and Pascal Ackermann (Bora-hansgrohe) - Bennett leads the points classification again.
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And while he said the whole team was so good today, he singled out his final lead-out man Michael Mørkøv for special mention.
“When I get
nervous, I just have to stay behind him and not panic and he always gets me
there. A lot of the results I’m getting are down to Michael so, yeah, he’s
absolutely awesome,” he said in reply to journalists at the finish today.
"I was suffering the last few k. I don't know what
it is, but people won't let me follow my own train here and it's frustrating in
the final. I just got back on just before the roundabout.
"It was a very hard final. I didn't think I'd hold
it to the line, but the guys did an incredible job and I'm just proud that I
could finish it off.
"For some reason, I'm not left to follow my own
wheel. And guys are coming in and it seems like they just want to disrupt our
sprint instead of concentrating on their own race. We don't look at anybody
else, so I don't know why they're getting so fixated on us."
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