GEORGE BENNETT
JUMBO-VISMA
Iexpected to wake up the day after the Tour in a bad way, but maybe not this bad. After ripping around the streets of Paris with a lot to celebrate, I think it would be hard to judge us for having a beer or seven.
I felt that I’d been fighting something the last few days, and about two hours after crossing the line, it became clear that my body was enduring a humiliating defeat. I broke out in a massive fever and now, as I navigate my way back to Girona to suffer in peace, it has me hating any form of light, noise and human under the age of 10. I feel a bit ripped off. I was prepared to be in a bad way, but I assumed it would be self-inflicted.
I won’t punish you with a blow-by-blow of the Tour de France, but I wanted to draw attention to a couple of my personal highs and lows. I should start by saying it was pretty amazing for us, with four stage wins and third overall for Stevie. It has been the most successful Tour in our team’s history.
It started brilliantly and after we won the first stage, we then nailed the team time trial. I’m still not comfortable with people informing me that
I am now a Tour stage winner, especially considering how
little I contributed compared to guys like Tony and Wout, but after that stage, things were very good in the Jumbo-Visma camp. There was a lot of hype around the things we did to ride at nearly 60kph for 30km, but what won it for us probably wasn’t marginal gains, but signing some massive engines who have a freakish ability to ride a bike fast. We are not the first team to have fast tyres and beetroot juice, but it was nice to see hours of hard work pay off and see the team’s head of performance, Mathieu Heijboer, get the credit he deserves.
It all looked good for me sitting just off the podium going into stage 10, but I knew at some stage I would have to break the hearts of New Zealand cycling fans and be called upon to do something that would sacrifice any overall chances. In the end I lost out to chaos, confusion and bad planning when I was called back for bottles just before a massive section of crosswind that exploded the race. It was a tough pill to swallow and even tougher to pretend
I didn’t care, but put it this way: I just hope I have a day before the end of the season when I don’t think about that moment.
I’m still licking my wounds after dropping myself twice on stage 18. The first crash gave me the worst dead leg I’ve had in a while and the second left me with missing skin and anger for taking so many risks getting back to the front group. At least there was no lingering damage, but I paid for it in the last few days. I lacked any real form of turbo to climb like I had before.
So back to reality. I’ve had nearly a month of having every minute of my day mapped out for me and no-one and nothing else to worry about other than riding my bike. It’s a strange readjustment being in a quiet apartment away from the madness of the Tour, but for the moment a quiet room and my guitar is living the dream.
“It was a tough pill to swallow, but put it this way: I just hope I have a day before the end of the season when I don’t think about that moment”