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In true Irish style, Sam Bennett has said he still wasn’t taking it for granted that he had the Tour de France green jersey wrapped up despite coming through today’s mountainous TT.
“I’m still cautious. There’s one more day. I won’t
celebrate until we bring the green jersey home, if we do…,” he said.
“Today I’m just happy to finish inside the time limit so
I can get to Paris. I’m looking forward to tomorrow. There’ll be two steps: the
intermediate sprint and the final sprint.
“It’s a sprinter’s dream (racing) to the Champs-Elysées in the green jersey. If I could manage to win the last stage with the green jersey it would be amazing but everyone wants to win there.”
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The Irish cyclist was 131st in today’s 36.2km TT up La Planche des Belles Filles, exactly 10 minutes down on stage winner and new yellow jersey Tadej Pogačar (UAE-Team Emirates).
However, the time loss meant nothing to
Deceuninck-QuickStep’s Bennett. All that matters is he emerged from the stage
with the same 55-point lead in the green jersey contest over his nearest rival
Peter Sagan (Bora-hansgrohe).
With the intermediate sprint tomorrow, where a maximum 20
points on offer, and 50 points for the stage win, it was mathematically
possible Bennett could still be beaten by Sagan.
In reality, Bennett will very likely gain points over Sagan in both sprints and he may even win the stage. His most likely rival for the victory tomorrow, Caleb Ewan (Lotto-Soudal), has looked exhausted over the past week but may shake that off tomorrow.
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Bennett said he rode today to a fixed plan to ensure he
made the time cut and now all he was thinking of was Paris, where he will
finish his second Tour and win the second most important category in the race.
“We had a plan, with the coach, for the tempo that we
would set,” he said of today’s TT and
making sure he was inside the time cut.
“I went a little over it, just to be sure, because it
looked like a time trial that you could actually lose a lot of time on. So I
wanted to be sure I made it tomorrow.
“I definitely
went a bit over, but I worked so hard to get to this point, I couldn’t make any
fatal mistake.
"I think when I arrive into the Champs-Elysees and
that first lap it's going to be another thing that's going to be amazing, I'll
probably have a tear in my eye," he added.
"It's something you always dream about. I'm looking forward to the occasion and doing the best race we can possibly do and seeing if we can take home another stage."
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