Sam Bennett gets his 2023 underway tomorrow, Sunday, at Vuelta a San Juan Internacional in Argentina and the Irishman says he wants to win immediately. While he will face Fabio Jakobsen (Soudal-QuickStep), arguably the best sprinter in the world last year, the other fast men in the field are ranked below Bennett in the pecking order.
However, the Carrick-on-Suir man expected his rivals to be "hungry" and "motivated". He said he was now completely injury-free, and had been for a long time. He added he was targeting at least one stage win, and hopefully more, in a race that includes at least four or five likely bunch sprint finishes.
"I feel good, I had a good winter, the injuries are behind me so it was nice to start my off-season with good morale. Everything's going good and hopefully we can get some good results this week in San Juan," he told Eurosport in Argentina.
Advertisement
"We want to try and start the season on a good note; excited to get back into the bunch sprints with the guys. When you do a hard winter, you're still questioning whether you're good or you're bad or whether it's worked or not. Normally it's fine. But you always have that (uncertainty) coming into the first races. I'd like to get a win here. I think quietly, in my head, I want more than one win. But one win would be nice."
Related News
Bennett said it was important for a sprinter to win early in the year, to bring about good morale and foster confidence within the group in his own team.
"It just gets the ball rolling for the year, it takes the pressure off yourself and the people around you. I hope I can do it." He was looking forward to "a lot of sprint opportunities" in San Juan, saying Jakobsen would be his biggest rival, though other sprinters in the field would be "hungry" and "motivated".
Aside from Bennett and Jakobsen, there are only a handful of top tier sprinters in the field, and some of those have not produced their best performances for some time. Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) should also be in the mix as well as Sam Welsford (Team DSM), Elia Viviani (Ineos Grenadiers), Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies) and Giacomo Nizzolo (Israel-Premier Tech).
Bennett also said he felt he had immediately slotted into life at Bora-hansgrohe again - which he rejoined at the start of last season - very smoothly, adding the staff made "life as a cyclist much easier". He added his lead-out line-up, with Danny van Poppel and Ryan Mullen, was now settled and the more they raced together, the better they worked as a unit.
"I think when you can do lead-outs and sprints more often it just flows better and the more you do, the better it gets," he said. "I think it's quite important we do as many races as we can together."
