Bennett on track for Giro d’Italia
The morning of the Tour of the Alps, Nelson cyclist George Bennett felt like he had been hit by a car. But that’s because he had been.
Bennett collided with a Fiat Panda, driven by a priest, while out on a training ride the day before the Tour of the Alps started.
With next month’s Giro d’Italia – one of his three major targets for 2018 – fast approaching, it sent a major scare through the LottoNLJumbo camp and rightly so.
However, the 28-year-old cyclist walked away relatively unscathed and managed to not only complete the Tour but also achieve his best result of the year, with Bennett edging Tour de France champion Chris Froome for fifth.
‘‘I was pretty happy. The second day I thought maybe there were still big problems from the crash as my whole body was just not responding and I had a pretty bad day but then the last few days I actually came pretty good so I think I’m pretty much out of the woods now,’’ said Bennett, when reflecting on the race that was staged in both Austria and Italy.
Bennett still has some bruising, and a niggling shoulder complaint that LottoNL-Jumbo will continue to monitor, but he knows he got away pretty lucky, especially as the incident occurred on the 12 month anniversary of Michele Scarponi’s death and at a time where up and coming Kiwi rider Alex Ray is fighting for his life after he was struck by a car in Auckland.
‘‘The day after [the crash] I was really sore. You knew you had been hit by a car. I was full of bruises and swelling and sore points. But nothing was really bad. There was nothing that I could single out that could stop me.’’
Although it was the final hit-out for most of the peloton before the Giro gets under way, Bennett isn’t reading too much into the results, especially that of Froome’s, who will be one of his major rivals.
‘‘It’s a nice confidence boost but I don’t think you can read too much into the Tour of the Alps in terms of Giro preparation just because it is quite different in that it’s a five-day race with really short stages,’’ he said.
‘‘A lot of the good guys for the Giro were there but they were probably using it the same as me, just as a hit-out for the Giro and I don’t think it’s going to be until the second week of the Giro that we get a really clear picture if we are there or thereabouts.
‘‘I dropped him [Froome] on the final stage but he rides very strangely and I get the feeling he’s playing games a bit. He’s trying to give the impression that he’s not super but I think he could secretly be absolutely flying because you would drop him and he’d look like he’s completely gone then in the last moment he’d come back.’’
Another bonus for Bennett was the fact he achieved back-to-back second-place finishes to conclude the Tour, and that one of those came on a course that covered much of the same ground that will be used for this year’s Road World Championships.
Bennett has already called for Cycling New Zealand to send him maximum support for the world championships as he is adamant that he can produce a strong result, and his performance at the Tour of the Alps should only add further weight to that argument.