Sam Bennett limps home battered at the end of stage 1 of the Tour de France. The man helping him, Shane Archbold, would later crash out of his first Tour with a broken pelvis. But they are hard men and they've already regrouped (Photo: Sirotti)
Sam Bennett enjoyed a strong end of season when he regrouped and took some great victories, but it was a testing year for the Irishman at times.
A number of bad crashes, at exactly the wrong times, have secured him a place in Eurosport’s ‘5 unluckiest pros of 2016’.
As well as Bennett, also in there are John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin), Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo), Ilnur Zacharin (Katusha) and Pierre Rolland (Cannondale-Drapac).
You can read the full piece on Eurosport by following this link.
For Bennett, riding for Bora-Argon 18 this year; a crash on the opening stage of the Tour of Belgium in May left him battered with the Tour de France rapidly approaching in early June.
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And when that race got underway Bennett was in the thick of things at the end of the opening stage into Utah Beach when some poorly placed crowd control barriers resulted in a bad crash.
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Bennett came down very hard and while he survived to finish in Paris, the fall ruined his race.
His hand was particularly badly injured and it was only well into the race that a broken finger was diagnosed.
However, while he spoke of being badly injured and rattled, it wasn't long until he was back to winning ways.
In September he sprinted in to win the concluding stage of the two-day Giro della Toscana (UCI 2.1), holding off Mark Cavendish in the process.
And he also claimed another victory Paris-Bourges at the beginning of last month, getting a very tight verdict over Russian fastman Alexander Porsev (Katusha) when a photo-finish was needed to decide the outcome.
Tour de France stage 1 crash, June
Tour of Belgium stage 1 crash, May
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