It’s Olympics before TDF for Bennett
Top New Zealand cyclist George Bennett will forgo Jumbo-visma’s Tour de France tilt in the hope of winning gold at the Olympic Games.
The 29-year-old has outlined his big goals for 2020 and said the opportunity to ride for a result at the Tokyo Olympics was simply too good to turn down, despite the Dutch team looming as strong contenders to win their first-ever Tour.
‘‘The team basically said if you really want to do a good Olympics then the Tour won’t work for you,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘I look at what the other guys are doing – the guys who are going to the Olympics full gas were either going to stop the Tour early or they’re going to take it a bit easy in some of the stages, and that just wasn’t going to be an option with us because you only have six days from Paris to then get Japan, acclimatise, get over the jet lag and recover from the Tour, then you’ve got to race.’’
Jumbo-visma have confirmed that new signing Tom Dumoulin will co-lead the team at next year’s Tour alongside Steven Kruijswijk and Vuelta a Espana champion Primoz Roglic, giving them enough arsenal to mount a serious challenge for the yellow jersey despite Team Ineos’ recent dominance.
While Bennett said he would have loved to have been involved, rating the Jumbovisma’s selection as ‘‘the best Tour de France team in many years’’, the Olympics come around only once every four years and he believes he can achieve something special in the men’s road race, which takes place near Mount Fuji.
‘‘The Tour will be there for a few years but this is a once in a lifetime Olympics course so I may as well put all my eggs in that basket,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s pretty special. When I did the Olympics last time, it was just after the Tour and the Tour was the big thing and the Olympics was just to see what I had left. But I don’t know why they didn’t put the road race at the end of the Olympics.’’
Despite skipping the Tour, Bennett will still have an opportunity to ride for a general classification result at a Grand Tour, confirming his secondary goal will be the Giro d’italia, where he will co-lead alongside sprinter Dylan Groenewegen.
The Nelson rider achieved New Zealand’s best result when he finished eighth at the Giro in 2018, but given the talent on Jumbo-visma’s increasingly stacked roster, he will likely need a podium finish to command a leadership role at the Tour the following year.
‘‘The idea of trying to win the Tour with a team is also really exciting and that was something I agonised over for a long time. I was thinking about it for about a month since they started asking questions and I really couldn’t work it out.
‘‘But in the end I thought that racing for New Zealand is pretty special, and that’s obviously the Olympics. Plus it’s pretty exciting to have a shot at a Grand Tour.
‘‘The Giro course I wouldn’t say is one that suits me very well but on the other hand at the Tour there’s already three leaders, so there wasn’t room for another leader.
‘‘Although I don’t mind helping, it would have been the only Grand Tour I would have done next year and you kind of want a shot at [winning] one [yourself].’’
Bennett’s upcoming season will begin at the Tour Down Under in Australia in January before returning to New Zealand to contest the national championships.