Sam Bennett had a more testing time on today's stage of the Tour of Oman but lives to fight another day.
The Irish duo of Nicolas Roche and Sam Bennett had mixed fortunes on today’s third stage of the Tour of Oman.
Roche finished safely in the bunch while Bennett lost four and a half minutes and dropped down the overall standings.
Although mainly flat, today’s 145km trek featured two short climbs in the finale which caught out Bennett and meant he played no part in the sprint that settled the stage despite some of the other fast men making it all the way to fight it out for victory.
An early escape containing Jelle Wallays (Topsport Vlaanderen-Baloise), Nicola Boem (Bardiani-CSF), Martijn Maaskant (UnitedHealthcare) and Kevin Ista of IAM Cycling opened a maximum advantage of three minutes over the peloton during the day but the quartet were caught inside the final 15 kilometres.
Advertisement
The final climb of Al Jissah saw an attack by Team Sky’s defending champion Chris Froome marked by Fabian Cancellara (Trek), with Peter Sagan (Cannondale) and Zdenek Stybar of Omega Pharma Quickstep joining the duo up front.
But with the sprinters’ teams massing at the front and the riders racing into a headwind, these four were reeled in in the final kilometre, although Sagan still managed to hold on for second on the stage behind stage one winner Andre Greipel of Lotto Belisol.
Greipel also took over the race lead again due to a 10 second time bonus for winning the stage, giving him an eight second advantage over Leigh Howard of Orica GreenEdge.
Related News
Roche, in his first race of the season for Tinfoff-Saxo after a disrupted winter, is now 46th overall at 20 seconds.He had a dig off the front of the bunch at one point, suggesting he has confidence in the knee injury that has troubled him of late.
Bennett dropped down to 115th ahead of tomorrow’s fourth stage, which features three climbs including the final ascent of Boucher Alamrat with 13km to go.
Bennett's sporting director, Enrico Poitschke said he was not surprised the Irish man ran out of juice when the road went up at the end of the stage.
"Since Sam had already ridden in the Tour of Qatar and has been out in front for the last two stages, we were prepared for the fact that his energy might start to run out," he said.
"Sam is still very young and not yet accustomed to racing with such intensity at this level. He felt that today on the final climb. The team reacted immediately and picked up the sprint for Zak, who was able to sprint to an eighth place finish.
"Overall it was a good performance, but of course we are also aiming for more than just the top 10 and will have to see what the next stages hold in store for us."
Topics
