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Sam Bennett has said the Tour de France turned out so well, with two stage wins and the green jersey victory, that he was unable to pick his favourite moment.
Instead, he enjoyed fighting through the whole race for the green jersey, becoming only the second Irishman to win it and the first since Sean Kelly's fourth and final victory in the classification in 1989.
“I can’t pick one moment because the whole battle was
something special,” he said of fighting off Peter Sagan and Matteo Trentin for
the points classification.
Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe), who has won the green jersey seven times in his career and only lost it once in eight years when he was disqualified from the race, took the fight to Bennett every day.
Along with former European champion Matteo Trentin (CCC Team), Sagan contested the intermediate sprints every day and as many stage finishes as possible to try and beat Bennett; putting his team on the front many times in a bid to drop the Irishman.
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And that meant Bennett (Deceuninck-QuickStep) was forced to beat them at the intermediate sprints, at the finishes, mark them as they tried to break away and even go in a couple of breakaway groups with them.
It was a fight that lasted the whole race and saw Bennett’s star, both within the sport and among the Irish public and media, climb higher and higher every day.
It burned brightest yesterday in Paris when he won the final stage with the green jersey on his shoulders on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées.
It was huge turnaround for Bennett who was a team mate of Sagan's at Bora-hansgrohe until the end of last year. Bennett was unable to get a ride in the Tour during the past three years because Sagan was preferred by team management.
But now the Irish rider, backed so comprehensively and successfully on the Tour by his new team Deceuninck-QuickStep, has ended the green jersey dominance of Sagan in the race.
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The fight for the green jersey was built on two stage wins and hard work every day by Bennett and his team mates, but it was also not without controversy.
While Sagan crossed the line 2nd on stage 11 - one place behind Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) and one place ahead of Sam Bennett - he had barged Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma) to get there and was relegated in the result.
That meant he lost 30 points for 2nd place and was also docked a further 13 points as a sanction. And with Bennett bumped up to 2nd that day, he gained an additional 10 points as he won 30 points for 2nd rather than 20 points for being 3rd.
So as a direct result of the relegation, Sagan was 53 points worse off in relation to Bennett than he would have been had the result stood.
However, Bennett ended the classification yesterday with 380 points to Sagan's 284; a winning margin much larger than what Sagan had lost to Bennett due to his stage 11 relegation, which came 24 hours after Irish cyclist Bennett won stage 10.
“It was such a difficult Tour for me but it was so worth it,” said Bennett who won stage 10 and then had such great chance of green that his team went all-out for him and the Irish people really took notice.
“I did feel pressure but, you know, the funniest thing was that the most pressure came from myself," the 29-year-old from Carrick-on-Suir explained.
"But when I got so much support from home, it was also like the pressure from that expectation was something I’d never felt before.
“And that was hard to deal with at times, and to perform with that expectation… To pull it off I’m so proud.
“I enjoyed the battle. I think a very special moment was coming into the Champs-Élysées wearing the green, I got goose bumps. And the moment I hit the front coming to the line, that feeling was amazing.
“And just crossing the line… having that support from the team, and seeing how much effort they were putting into me. It was amazing, I’m so proud of the boys.”
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