Sam Bennett has emerged from a nervous and wet opening stage of the Tour de France in 4th place.
Both Dan Martin (Israel Start Up Nation) and Nicolas Roche (Team Sunweb) were caught up by late crashes but they appeared uninjured and the time loss should not count towards the general classification.
The sprint finish into Nice was won by Alexander Kristoff (UAE Team Emirates) from world champion Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo) and Cess Bol (Team Sunweb).
The stage was littered with crashes in the rain, with Bennett caught up in one of the many early falls and also being forced to chase later in the day after a puncture.
But the Carrick-on-Suir man shrugged off those challenges to get back into the bunch and fight for the win.
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However, the Carrick-on-Suir man and his Deceuninck-QuickStep team got a bit swamped in the finale.
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While Bennett's lead-out man Michael Mørkøv did a great job to get Bennett back to the front at the perfect moment, they had come from a long way back.
And while Kristoff and Bennett kicked for the line around the same time, Bennett's usual burst didn't seem to be with him today, on a day when Kristoff pulled a brilliant sprint out of the bag to win it very well.
Bennett was 4th and though he will be disappointed, he came through the stage in one piece. He is also a rider who normally takes a stage or two to get fired up and he and his team will be confident that he'll take a win later in the race.
Lots more to come.
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