Sam Bennett will return to racing action this weekend, despite his team boss Patrick Lefevere recently suggesting his season was over as he needed surgery on a knee injury and months of recovery.
Bennett (31) will return to racing at the European Road Championships this weekend, riding for the Irish national team, in Trento, Italy.
The Deceuninck-QuickStep rider enjoyed a very strong first half of the 2021 season, taking seven victories including his first ever WorldTour one-day race win, when he triumphed at Oxyclean Classic Brugge-De Panne in March.
However, as he prepared for the Tour de France he suffered a minor mishap out training, when he banged his knee off the handlebars. That injury lingered, causing pain, and meant Bennett could not train properly for the Tour de France.
Just before the French Grand Tour he decided he could not start the race. He said at the time he needed time to make sure his knee had recovered and also said he had lost the shape required for the Tour after missing so much training in the weeks before the event.
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His team boss, Patrick Lefevere, then went on to make a number of appalling remarks about Bennett, with the relationship between rider and team clearly worsening rapidly.
Lefevere eventually said Bennett's injury was so bad it required surgery and suggested the Irish sprinter would also need between three and four months of recovery and rehab.
"A recent scan shows that he will require knee surgery, with a three to four month rehabilitation period. He will therefore no longer race for our team,” Lefevere said in a newspaper column exactly one month ago.
Since then Bennett has signed for two years for Bora-hansgrohe in a deal that will start on January 1st next. But now he is making a return to racing, much sooner than expected.
We'll have more later on the Irish team at the Europeans, though stickybottle got a jump on the team make-up in recent days, which you can read by following this link.
More to come.
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