Sean Kelly believes Sam Bennett was right not to push his knee injury and ride the Tour de France. But he was also concerned about the Irish sprinter for the remainder of the season considering some of the comments coming from his boss Patrick Lefevere.
Deceuninck-QuickStep team boss Lefevere questioned if Bennett not riding the Tour was down to performance anxiety, or a fear of failure, rather than his injured knee.
For his part, Bennett (30) has said his knee was now pain free but he needed time to be sure the problem was resolved and he also needed time to get race fit.
Sean Kelly told stickybottle he believed Bennett’s view was the correct one, adding while his knee may feel OK in his day to day activities, and even out on the bike, riding the Tour de France on it was a completely different proposition.
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Kelly said Lefevere’s comments about Bennett were effectively coming from a team manager who believed he had done a lot for Bennett and so he was now hitting out at the sprinter because he was leaving the team.
“These riders who may be leaving a team, very often those are the ones that can win the big races for that team. And this is the way the directeurs some times carry on,” Kelly said of Lefevere
“If Sam had re-signed with QuickStep for the next
two years, we wouldn’t be hearing any of that from Lefevere.
“He feels he took Sam on, he made Sam a real big champion and the best sprinter in the world, and now he’s disappointed (Bennett is) going. So he’s getting a bit back at Sam because he hasn’t re-signed for him. He’s giving him a punch back because of the situation.”
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Looking ahead to the remainder of the year, Kelly said he was concerned about Bennett’s race programme given the team situation that had now arisen. The team had also spoken about bringing Fabio Jakobsen to the Vuelta as its sprinter.
“It’s a tricky one,” said Kelly. “There’s a lot of races still to come. But it’s about the good races; will he (Lefevere) put Sam into the good races? It’ll all depend on how Jakobsen looks in the next while before the Vuelta.
“Jakobsen may not be in a condition to win stages at the Vuelta. But Lefevere may be prepared to just accept that and get him a good three weeks of racing to get him back to a top level for next year when he’ll be staying with the time. So because of that, Sam could suffer. I’d been a little concerned the situation might get tricky between Sam and Lefevere.”
However, all of those permutations aside, Kelly was very clear that if Bennett had doubts about his knee, then he was doing the right thing not riding the Tour de France, which starts on Saturday.
“Sam has lost fitness due to the injury because he wasn’t
able to do the Tour of Belgium and he wasn’t able to train. So he’s lost a lot
of condition,” Kelly said
“And the knee might have come right just now, but if he goes
into the Tour de France and you start racing full on, then the risk of that
injury coming back is big. And, really, that’s the problem.”
“Unless you’re close to your best, it’s going to be very hard to get through those first days. You will suffer so much you’ll just start going downhill rather than getting better.
“And then with this injury… it’s not at a point where he can throw himself into a race and it will get better. Such a heavy programme of racing may aggravate it again, and I think that is a really big concern.
“He might have gone into the Tour, and then the injury
starts to come back at you. And then you’re getting treatment on the race and
you go on and on in the race, hoping things will get better, because you don’t
want to leave the race after five or six days. There’s risk of longer term
damage.”
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