Bennett’s team Vuelta favourites
‘‘In the Tour despite not getting a result I think I showed myself to be one of the best climbers there and that stuff still gets noticed.’’
George Bennett
George Bennett has the potential to achieve New Zealand’s best-ever grand tour result as his JumboVisma team firm as the pre-race favourites for the Vuelta a Espana.
The Dutch team has gone all in on the general classification, giving leadership roles to Primoz Roglic, Steven Kruijswijk and Bennett, as they look to better Roglic’s and Kruijswijk’s third place finishes from the Giro d’Italia and Tour de France.
Although Roglic is the true leader and best chance of winning, Kruijswijk and Bennett are also considered ‘‘protected’’ riders in a powerful lineup put together with overall victory in mind.
Unlike the Tour, where Bennett, 29, operated as a worker for Kruijswijk and ultimately had to sacrifice his own general classifications ambitions, he has been given a license to ride for an overall result and hunt for stage wins, which should make for enthralling viewing for Kiwi cycling fans so long as he backs up in reasonable form after crashing twice.
‘‘In the Tour basically I was a pure helper with no ambition, nothing. From day one it was ride at the front, get bottles and never ever think of an opportunity,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘But here it’s like I’m third in line but there’s five other guys behind me. We don’t have a sprinter to look after, there’s other guys to get bottles. There will be three of us left in the mountains and if I’m needed I’ll be the first to work, but when you work in the deep final of a race it’s different to riding at the front for 180km. Getting a really good result is impossible but getting a nice result is entirely possible.’’
The only New Zealand rider to achieve a top-10 finish at a grand tour, Bennett finished eighth at the Giro in 2018 and 10th at the Vuelta in 2016.
Given the impressive form of Roglic and Kruijswijk, and the now confirmed arrival of Dutch star Tom Dumoulin, he will need to improve on those results otherwise he could risk dropping down to No 4 on the pecking order next year.
‘‘In the Tour despite not getting a result I think I showed myself to be one of the best climbers there and that stuff still gets noticed. People know I didn’t get a chance to ride for a result. But it is nice for yourself to have a result,’’ he said.
Helping Jumbo-Visma’s cause, many of the sport’s biggest names will be missing at the start line in Torrevieja tonight (NZ time).
Chris Froome and Dumoulin remain sidelined with injuries, defending champion Simon Yates is skipping the race after a busy year, while neither Egan Bernal nor Geraint Thomas will be backing up from the Tour, where they finished one and two.
That leaves a group of South Americans; Movistar’s Giro winner Richard Carapaz and Nairo Quintana, Astana’s Miguel Angel Lopez, Mitchelton-Scott’s Esteban Chaves and EF-Eduation First’s Rigoberto Uran, as the JumboVisma trio’s strongest challengers for the red jersey.
‘‘It was great to have Stevie on the podium at the Tour but to have multiple options is the difference between winning the thing and being in the top five. The goal has to be to try and win the overall with one of us,’’ Bennett said.
‘‘We have one of the [best teams] but the main thing is we can’t get ahead of ourselves and think, yeah, we’ve got a great team and do what we did last year where we lit it up from the first climb and blew everyone’s doors off, but then at the same time blew ourselves up.
‘‘While we do have one of the favourites and on paper one of the strongest teams, it’s pretty important to remember that me and Stevie are both coming off the Tour de France so we both have big questions over us, whereas Carapaz, Lopez, these guys have come from the Giro and had a couple of months of specific buildup. We could be really good or we could be s...house, so you just don’t really know.’’
Jumbo-Visma will be looking to hit the ground running in the opening stage team time trial, having also won the TTT at the Tour albeit with a slightly different lineup. Although short enough that there won’t be massive time gaps, the 13.4km stage presents itself as an early chance for Roglic to get his hands on the red jersey.
‘‘That’s such as much of a goal for the GC as it is for the stage win,’’ Bennett said. ‘‘At the Tour we also had different guys, we had a whole lead-out train for Dylan Groenewegen and they are traditionally really good at time trials.
‘‘Here we have a different team, we have Roglic and we have Tony Martin who are obviously big engines so we’ll be competitive for the win, but at the Tour I thought we were a really good chance of winning. Here it’s a little shorter and a little more explosive. We want to win but the main goal has to be just taking time on other guys.’’
Joining Bennett at the Vuelta are fellow Kiwis Patrick Bevin (CCC), Shane Archbold (BoraHangrohe), Dion Smith and Sam Bewley (both Mitchelton-Scott).