Bennett sprints to opening stage victory at Paris-Nice

AFTER his Deceuninck-Quickstep team managed to get him into position with just two kilometres remaining in a hectic finale, Sam Bennett scorched to victory in the opening stage of ‘The Race to the Sun’ ahead of French road race champion Arnaud Demare of FDJ and former world champion Mads Pedersen of Trek Segafredo.

In a feverish end to the day’s proceedings, Bennett’s squad were nowhere to be seen until the last two kilometres where Danish powerhouse Michael Morkov brought Bennett to the front and left the Carrick-on-Suir man to surf the wheels in the run in to the sprint finish.

“We just kind of floated around until 15km to go and I was looking for Michael,” said Bennett afterwards.

“We found each other with about 10km to go but found it very difficult to move up. We couldn’t move up until like 2k to go. We were trying the whole time but eventually it all came together and we got into position.

“The plan was for Michael to drop me on a good wheel just so that we wouldn’t end up going too early. We just thought it would be easier to take a wheel in the finale.”

As the sprint started, Bennett found himself boxed in but managed to manoeuvre into daylight before launching his sprint and kicking clear to claim stage victory.

“Michael did a fantastic job again. He’s always so calm and collected. When I’m panicking and I see how calm he is, it relaxes me and it’s really nice to have that to follow. He did a fantastic race today, the whole team did and they managed the race well and kept it together.

“(Mattia) Cattaneo got us into a great position with 2k to go when it was very hard to move up and he got us there so the whole team did a fantastic job. Michael again, did it exactly as he said he would.”