Sean Kelly began to fear in recent days Bora-hansgrohe was shaping up for a general classification assault on the Tour de France and so would not select Sam Bennett. Now it's confirmed neither Bennett nor his Irish lead-out man Ryan Mullen is picked for the Tour, Kelly said Bennett had to dig deep and get back to the top of his game for La Vuelta.
But he also said if Aleksandr Vlasov (26), around whom the Tour team is built, goes and does a major performance at the Tour it would present problems for Bennett that persisted into the second year of his two-year contract with the team.
Bennett won two stages and the green jersey at the Tour in 2020 while riding for Deceuninck-Quick Step. However, he bumped his knee off his handlebar while training just before the Tour of Belgium, resulting in an injury that kept him out of the Tour last year.
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Since then, Bennett has rejoined Bora-hansgrohe and his status in the sport meant he was able to bring in three lead-out men; Mullen, Shane Archbald and Danny van Poppel. While that lead-out train has worked well so far this year, Bennett has yet to recapture his form of the opening months of last year and of the 2020 season.
And so he has not been picked for the Tour de France, with the team building around Vlasov’s GC hopes instead and also selecting riders who can support him and try to win some stages themselves.
The fact Bennett and Mullen are not in the team is a major set-back as both fully expected to be riding the race, even though Bennett was still trying to build his form to peak at the Tour.
Asked for his first thoughts on the omission of Bennett, Kelly told stickybottle: “I was a little bit concerned the last two or three days when the team wasn’t being announced and it was taking a bit of time. I said it to my brother ‘hopefully they won’t go for a GC team’ but that’s exactly what they’ve done.”
Kelly said Bennett now
had to dig in and redouble his efforts to recapture the form he had shown for years
up until his injury last May. He also explained that being left out of the Tour
line-up meant the rest of the season – especially the Vuelta – was now absolutely
crucial for him.
“You have to work
harder, keep on working,” he said. “Now the Vuelta is the one where Sam has to
get back to that level. The problem is, he just wasn’t at the level (to date
this year) that he showed at that start of last year, not at all.
“There was a number
of times there recently where he was in a winning position and if it was Sam of
early last year or the previous year, he’d have won those sprints comfortably.
But you could see he just hadn’t got that kick at all. He was getting out of
the saddle and had to sit down, the legs were burning so much. And that was telling
us he was having to make such a big effort to get to that point in the race
that he just didn’t have that kick.”
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Asked why Bennett’s
kick hadn’t returned this year, Kelly said there was no neat answer. But he
believed his fellow Carrick-on-Suir man could come back and hit the heights
that have brought him eight Grand Tour stage wins so far in his career.
“He was out of
competition for so long last year,” Kelly noted. “OK, after (his injury in May)
he came back later and did some races but he rode 80-100km and then stopped. So
those races don’t count at all. So you could say that from the moment he banged
his knee, the weeks before the Tour last year… You can look at it from that
time, right to the end of the season, and basically say he didn’t do anything, he
didn’t race at all. And then you have the winter…
Kelly continued: “Sometimes when you are out of competition, away from that really top level, to get back there can take much longer for some guys and other guys can get back quickly. The worry for Sam will be, can he get back to that level? And that’s where he is going to have to really knuckle down and really work hard to be sure, 100 per cent, he has done everything he possibly can for the Vuelta and to get back to the top level there.”
Vlasov worth backing for Tour
Kelly believed Vlasov deserved his chance as the GC leader on the Tour and he also found it hard to argue with the selections made across the Bora-hansgrohe team. He said Vlasov placed 4th in the Giro d’Italia last year and had won Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana and Tour de Romandie this year while also being on the way to winning Tour de Suisse last week before being forced out due to Covid-19 while leading the race.
“I’d have confidence in him that for a three week race he’ll be OK, and the team certainly have that confidence,” Kelly said of the 26-year-old Russian.
The team’s stated intention now is to refocus on GC at Grand Tours – after winning the Giro with Jai Hindley and now supporting the rising Vlasov for the Tour. Asked if that was an issue in itself for Bennett, Kelly said a big Vlasov performance at the Tour could be a problem.
“At the end of the Tour, we’ll have the answer
to that question,” he said. “If Vlasov did a really good Tour, if he hit the
final podium, well then that becomes another problem for Sam. And that’s where
Sam will really have to come back and be able to win these sprints comfortably
again. And then he would be showing that in a race like the Tour he was capable
of picking off two or three stages.
“And that is still possible for Sam,” said
Kelly, adding Bora-hansgrohe could focus, as intended, on GC in Grand Tours but
split their teams, with some resources for Bennett in the future and others for
Vlasov.
Kelly also said the fact Ryan Mullen was not
selected was “very disappointing for him”. He believed Mullen had been “really
looking forward to doing his Tour”.
He added there were riders in the
Bora-hansgrohe Tour team who could win stages - Nils Politt, Lennard
Kämna, Patrick Konrad and Felix Großschartner - whom Kelly said were very
versatile riders. He believed they could aim to take a stage from a breakaway or
on a medium mountain day and then also slot into supporting Vlasov’s GC effort for
the remainder of the race.
“Those guys can keep Vlasov safe, keep him out of trouble, and then in the last week they’ll see what he can do, see what he’s capable of,” he said. “But they can also try and target a stage in the first week or 10 days or so. They can use those guys in many different ways.”
