A year to remember, not to forget
At the end of last year George Bennett fell ill.
He was diagnosed with glandular fever and LottoNL-Jumbo’s team directors were concerned that rushing back into training could have a lasting impact and jeopardise the season when it really mattered, at the most significant races like the Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana and the world championships.
Under their orders, Bennett withdrew from the first two events of 2017; New Zealand’s elite road national championship and Australia’s Tour Down Under.
He was encouraged to stay off his feet.
‘‘If you train one day too early or one day too hard then you run the risk of crashing into the fatigue that everyone talks about.’’ That was Bennett in December. Yet here he is, nine months down the track, having learnt the hard way that those concerns was correct.
‘‘But that’s the thing, I’m always learning and this was a seriously good lesson for me,’’ he said. ‘‘My mind was way ahead of my body and in December the team had this concrete blood test that said I had glandular fever and if you rush back you can seriously do some damage.
‘‘This time round when I was sick I was just so motivated and didn’t have a virus with a name like glandular fever so I was going off feeling and coming back far too motivated.
‘‘But you see what happens, you completely implode and now I’ve ruined the back half of my season completely.’’
In hindsight, Bennett said he should have taken a longer break after the Tour de France.
‘‘I’m sure it would have been fine if I had just shut it down completely and came back and tried to ride my way through the Vuelta and, probably, by the last week I would have been good or good enough to at least fight for a stage win.’’
Although Bennett and his team were still trying to get to the bottom of what went wrong, he believes it was just a case of burnout and post-illness fatigue.
‘‘It’s so hard on your body what we do anyway and then you do it when you’re sick and you keep getting sick and you’re trying to train through.’’
But despite the frustrating months that have followed the Tour de France, Bennett said he will still look back on 2017 with good memories.
He described the year as his best ever ‘‘by far’’, achieving a maiden UCI World Tour victory at the Tour of California and challenging the sport’s biggest names at the Tour de France, although the illness ultimately dashed his bid to become the first Kiwi rider to finish in the top 10.
‘‘I look back it as a really good year.
‘‘It’s not quite finished yet but I would still call it by far my best season ever and I will take so many good things away from the year.
‘‘I’ve had a really enjoyable year and although I’m sick I still love bike racing more than ever. Essentially one thing went wrong, I got sick somewhere in the middle of July and that was the only thing that’s gone wrong really.
‘‘It’s annoying but it could have been a lot worse, especially last December with the glandular fever. That could have been the whole year written off but instead it turned around to be a really good one.’’
Although he will not compete at the world championships in Norway next week, Bennett is weighing up returning for the prestigious Tour of Lombardy in Italy on October 7, which would be his last race of 2017.
‘‘That is one of the most beautiful races of the year and it’s a race I have big ambitions for one day and I’m not going to do it with any stress or pressure because that can rush me back a bit too fast and leave me in a s*** position next year.’’