Bennett’s Tour of duty
Jumbo-visma’s newfound success creates a problem for Kiwi cyclist George Bennett,
‘‘It could all be a bunch of bollocks – but if it is true it will make things pretty crowded at Jumbo and I guess it just means everyone has to just get better and step it up and get their leadership spot.’’ George Bennett
George Bennett will have to produce the biggest result of his professional cycling career at the upcoming Vuelta a Espana in order to earn a leadership role for next year’s Tour de France, but whether he even gets the chance to ride for the overall title remains to be seen.
The New Zealand rider found himself on domestique duties for this year’s Tour with the rapidlyimproving Jumbo-visma pinning their general classification hopes on experienced Dutch rider Steven Kruijswijk instead.
That decision paid off with Kruijswijk securing the team’s first podium finish by coming third, 91 seconds down on winner Egan Bernal. Together with the team’s four stage victories, that made for an extremely successful three weeks for Jumbo-visma and continued their so far stellar 2019, with Primoz Roglic also finishing third at the Giro d’italia earlier in the year.
Incredibly, Roglic won the UAE Tour, Tirreno-adriatico and Tour de Romandie in the lead-up to the Giro and that golden run will be hard to ignore when Jumbovisma piece together their Tour de France roster next year.
So while Bennett is revelling in Jumbo-visma’s rise, the team now a major player on the Worldtour on the back of their best-ever Tour, the recent form shown by his team-mates could limit his own general classification opportunities moving forward, even if he has shown that he is capable of a top-10 result himself.
To complicate the issue further, Jumbo-visma have reportedly made an attempt to lure Dutch star Tom Dumoulin from Team Sunweb. Dumoulin won the Giro in 2017 and last year finished runner-up at both the Giro and Tour, and he would not be coming to play second fiddle.
While his arrival would provide Jumbo-visma with incredible depth and the attacking arsenal to seriously challenge Team Ineos at next year’s Tour, it would relegate Bennett further
down the pecking order unless he can produce a major result of his own at next month’s Vuelta.
‘‘If the rumours are true, and we genuinely don’t know, we only know what the press says – so it could be a bunch of bollocks – but if it is true it will make things pretty crowded at Jumbo and I guess it just means everyone has to just get better and step it up and get their leadership spot,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘We’re looking at everything now, the calendars and how they’re going to manage it. But I think we need to see what the team says. They saw how I was climbing at the Tour and they know left to my own devices I also could have done a nice result, so they definitely acknowledge that and we’ll just have to see what comes of it.
‘‘I definitely don’t want to be the only GC leader, I like the idea of having a couple of guys in case I have a crash or get sick – then it’s not just the team’s three weeks down the drain but a free role to give a shot, so we’ll see how it goes.’’
Tasked with supporting Kruijswijk in the mountains, Bennett was one of the unsung heroes of the Tour as he stuck by his leader on the race’s most difficult stages. But the decision by Jumbo-visma to split their resources between the general classification and sprints meant he was also required to do some of the more thankless tasks such as collect drink bottles, chase breakaways and set the tempo at the front of a peloton.
That ended up being his downfall. When Bennett dropped back to the support car when he thought his team-mates needed water on stage 10, he ended up getting caught on the wrong side of a split in the peloton and lost close to 10 minutes. At that point in the race he was sitting in fourth place and he had the yellow jersey in his sights.
But while his preference would be to have two designated leaders in the mould of Team Ineos’ Egan Bernal and Geraint Thomas, which is what Jumbo-visma intend to do at the Vuelta, the team can only select eight riders for each of the grand tours and there is not much room left to spare when they decide to bring world-class sprinter Dylan Groenewegen and his lead-out train.
Groenewegen is not expected to contest the Vuelta though, with Jumbo-visma likely to go all in on the general classification by sending Bennett, Kruijswijk, Roglic and Robert Gesink.
‘‘I think in the Tour we could have done it better and done a double GC attack or we could have at least had a plan B but in the end it worked out. But I think in future grand tours like the Vuelta, they wouldn’t be opposed to running a double leadership or at least having one guy in a free role even if he’s not super protected so he’s not chasing breakaways, doing the lead out or collecting bottles,’’ he said.
‘‘At the Tour de France I can always see Dylan being a big part of our team and he deserved to be because he’s one of the best sprinters in the world. But that’s the luxury problem we have. He deserves team-mates and lead-out men, so then you get guys like me trying to do breakaways and things that I’m not good at, which takes a toll when it comes to the mountains.
‘‘You’re already using a lot more energy than everyone else. So it means you do need a lot of versatile riders who can do stuff and now the teams are only eight riders, that one extra rider really makes a difference when you’re running a double objective.
‘‘I think if we took the approach like we are at the Vuelta, where we’re not going with a sprinter and we’re going with full GC focus, then there’s a bunch of guys to get bottles and keep us out of the wind and there’s enough room to ride a couple of GC riders and have no worries with it.’’
But while the team’s incredible depth does create a selection headache for the sporting directors, Bennett acknowledged that it was a luxury and he would much rather be in this situation, riding for one of the Worldtour’s strongest teams, than riding for a weaker one where there is little chance to succeed.
‘‘It’s far better to be talking about these issues than if we were talking about how one guy is going to get a result,’’ he said.
‘‘We were maybe the team of the Tour, with all the stage wins and the GC result and how we rode in the mountains. Often we were there with two guys and it was only the captains of the other teams left, so to do that and winning bunch sprints and team time trials, it was a credit to how deep our squad goes and you could have subbed a number of guys from the Tour team in from the larger squad and they’d be just as good.
‘‘It’s very competitive and it does make everyone step up their own game a bit more.’’
Bennett was scheduled to compete at the Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian in Spain this weekend, but after coming down with the ‘‘man flu’’ after returning home from the Tour, his participation is still touch and go. If he does compete, it will be his only hit-out prior to the Vuelta, which begins on August 24.