“Really, what do we do? If we’re just going to ride around, we don’t achieve anything. The only way you can be a contributing member of society is to use your profile to try to change something”
No Dutch sports team ever turned down the opportunity for a full and frank exchange of views, and you immediately think of this when you meet George Bennett, decked out in the wasp-like black and yellow of Team Lotto NLJumbo. The Dutch propensity for bespreek baarheid, open debate, is sometimes ascribed to the country’s Calvinist heritage – though the same cannot be said for Bennett, a vocal antitheist rarely short of a sardonic remark on the religious canon.
Some might have invoked divine intervention at the New Zealander’s lucky escape from a pre-Giro d’Italia training crash in the Adige valley, with a car reportedly piloted by – of all things – an octogenarian priest. As he flew over the vehicle, Bennett removed its roof rack with his knees; but for earthly reasons or otherwise, he landed intact. Lucky or not, there was nothing lucky about his subsequent performance in Italy.
The Giro proved an extension of the 28-year-old’s recent career narrative, grabbing attention both on and off the bike. On his first grand tour start as a designated team leader, Bennett came eighth, a creditable result somewhat diminished by his team subsequently placing two riders in the top five at the Tour de France. Technical problems at the foot of Monte Zoncolan put paid to a strong start in Italy, forcing Bennett to solo up Europe’s toughest pro climb in a desperate fight-or-flight pursuit of the leaders; crucial seconds were then bled throughout the final week.
Inexperience was perhaps the flaw, and evident too on the part of team press officers who landed their star Kiwi in the mire by posting a video of his unvarnished thoughts on Chris Froome’s breakaway win into Bardonecchia in Piedmont. The Lotto NL man’s incredulous, if fairly innocent reaction as he was told of Froome’s exploits during the warmdown, was widely quoted by the media,
Bennett's eighth place at this year's Giro came on his irst GC leadership bid
which was hungry for scandal; the team’s legal clarification was swift, though Bennett’s pithier retraction – “I didn’t say that Froomey went out and railed a load of gear” – was almost certainly a new one on Sky’s lawyers.
That bluntness is characteristic of a sportsman rare in his willingness to plough controversial terrain; a man whose Twitter feed cheerily navigates divisive issues from politics to religion and environmental protection. But as with most soundbites, you should read deeper and make up your own mind. In conversation, Bennett’s frankness can indeed be disarming, but it’s immediately clear that it would be a mistake to dismiss him as some rent-a-quote Twitter hero, out to put his name in lights and save the world in 280 characters. If anything, his is an understated loquacity; a thoughtful, vaguely intellectual candour. And in any case, he is entitled to a view: the hard knocks of his journey to the top afford sharp perspective.
“I was pretty late to the sport relative to some of the other guys who are so good now,” he explains. “I was playing rugby… There were four of us who would always go mountain biking after school. I wasn’t particularly good at it. I stopped making the regional rep team for rugby, because I was just a bit too small, and that was when I was about 15. I started looking at mountain biking a bit more seriously from a racing perspective. Once I started racing I was actually pretty handy at it, and it was a natural progression by the time I was 18, to get on a road bike, go to France and head down that road.”
The difference between “getting on a road bike” and “getting on a road bike
If you can stick it out in a French team, as a New Zealander, and you can make your way from there, you’ll have not only bike skills but life skills…
and heading to France” is apparent here, particularly for one who describes himself, without obvious irony, as a “small-town Kiwi”. The young Bennett certainly found the going tough when he landed in the Old World – but in Darwinian parlance, he survived, and his advice to young riders back home is to make the same jump.
“The experience you get road racing in Europe sets you up for your career,” he says. “If you can stick it out in a French team, as a New Zealander, and you can make your way from there, you’ll have not only bike skills but life skills… It all seems so distant when you are in New Zealand, but it is actually really possible.”
He is of course not the only rider to have made the leap, with Jack Bauer, Sam Bewley, Patrick Bevin and Tom Scully heading a small but refined export crop from the land of the long white cloud to the 2018 WorldTour. “We have a really good group of Kiwi pros at the moment,” Bennett says. “We’re all friends. It’s quite unique, I think. When you look at how the Dutch pros interact with each other, or the Belgian pros, there’s a lot of rivalries and old dirt from when they were young. [With] the New Zealanders, we all live up in Girona, we all hang out together and support each other in races. I think that’s really special.”
Evidently proud of his roots, Bennett remains an avid rugby fan, with former All Black centre Conrad Smith turning out to support him at his Tour debut in 2016. He is also keen, if technically limited, in the cricket nets: a purveyor of “short and wide off-spin” and he is looking forward, when we meet, to an unofficial Trans-Tasman Trophy matchup with Mitchelton-Scott’s Aussie Michael Hepburn.
Bennet shows his frustration at a lack of support from the New Zealand federation for a serious, team-backed tilt at the UCI World Championships on “a great course for me” at Innsbruck in Austria. The Nelson-born climber is also unconvinced that Kiwi representation in the elite ranks of the peloton will be prolonged. “We are still lacking any fundamental system of development,” he says. “So there’s always the danger that it’s just a purple patch and it will fizzle out.”
After a career-best grand tour placing at the Giro, Bennett’s next major goal was the Vuelta a España. Last year’s race proved a learning experience, after he threw himself into a misguidedly intense training regime before recovering from the illness that ended his Tour. “I went to the Vuelta and I was so bad they just sent me home. That was a big wake-up call – that we’re not invincible and we can’t just keep flogging a dead horse.”
The lessons have come thick and fast since turning pro in 2012 with the US RadioShack-Nissan squad. “When I first came into pro cycling, I was just not ready for it,” Bennett says. “It’s been a very quick progression. I [became] a road cyclist and then three years later I was on the WorldTour. I didn’t really know what I was doing and I lacked a lot of guidance in my first three years as a pro. Just going to these strange races, not having anyone to pull me aside and say, ‘Look, this is what you need to do.’ Moving to Lotto, they have that long-term approach. It started off with the Vuelta, stage-hunting and that kind of thing, and then slowly moving it, giving that guidance, that direction. It’s just made a huge difference.”
The move in 2015 to Dutch squad LottoNL-Jumbo was the most important step in Bennett’s development. The team is winning admirers for an increasingly scientific approach, with even Sky said to be looking over its shoulder at a formidable versatility in the top races. But surely being a lone Kiwi among jongens, the Dutch boys, brings its challenges?
“The team is a really good environment, for sure. In terms of how they nurture, what they do with talent and development, all the little things they do are amazing, and it’s helped me a lot. But for sure there’s times where you’re the only guy who’s not Dutch and you kind of just zone out. The first years on the team I was really pushing with learning Dutch and things like that; now I’m probably pushing for it to be more English… But I still get on really well with the guys, we still have fun, so it’s not really an issue.”
More than two years on, and you still can’t think about Lotto without conjuring the image of poor Steven Kruijswijk, in pink, ploughing into a snowbank on the descent of the Colle dell’Agnello with the 2016 Giro all but won. The Kiwi, who was not racing in Italy then, says he has not spoken to his team-mate about the pressures of leading a grand tour; and perhaps it is naïve, in the dog-eat-dog world of professional sport, to imagine that he might. But he admits the race was a watershed moment in the team’s evolution. “The Giro was a big one for our team,” Bennett says. “It made us realise that we had the talent and the resources to be successful in a grand tour.”
Climbers Koen Bouwman and Antwan Tolhoek, sprinter Dylan Groenewegen and ex-ski jumping marvel Primo Roglic lead a core of rising talent at Lotto NL-Jumbo. Roglic’s emergence as a GC contender, in particular, heaps added pressure on a rider still learning the ropes of grand tour leadership. But Bennett calls it “nice, exciting” to be the go-to man. “People talk about the pressure,” he says, “[but] for me I actually feel better. It’s just a confidence thing, you know? I knew last year I could be good and it’s just trickled on this year.”
The team announced a new three-year deal for Bennett during the Tour, which brings us back to bespreek baarheid. Does Bennett believe it’s important for sports stars to speak out on wider issues, to engage where many others would hide? His eyes light up.
“Yeah, absolutely, why not?” he asks. “I mean, what else are we good for? I mean really, what do we do? If we’re just going to ride around, we don’t achieve anything. The only way you can be a contributing member of society is to use your profile to try to change something, you know? Like the fact that we are just destroying planet Earth, and that we’re just a…”
He pauses to find the right words. “…just a terrible bloody virus on the face of the earth.”
And that seems like a fitting, if unconventional, way to end the interview with George Bennett, the cyclist who puts cycling firmly in its place with his view of the world. His burgeoning popularity is no mystery: here is a guy who gives his all, shows steady improvement, doesn’t take himself too seriously and gives an honest appraisal of pretty much any topic put in front of him. To sports fans reared on PR synthetics, he seems real.
Bennett says he’s “surprised” at the level of interest in him from rival teams this year, but he shouldn’t be. His results are impressive, his curve points upwards. This Kiwi has flown a long way, and there’s no saying how high he can go.
What else are we good for... The only way you can be a contributing member of society is to use your pro ile to try to change something