Bennett rules out stage hunt on Tour de France

New Zealand’s wait for a maiden individual stage win at the Tour de France looks set to continue.

Despite sliding down the general classification standings, George Bennett has ruled out chasing a stage victory over the remaining 11 stages of the race.

The Jumbo-Visma rider said he spoke with his sporting directors in the wake of his disastrous stage 10, which saw him lose close to 10 minutes due to a ‘‘massive communication cockup’’, and they reinforced that his responsibility is to continue supporting team leader Steven Kruijswijk.

Kruijswijk is 1min 27sec behind overall leader Julian Alaphilippe.

In usual circumstances, Bennett’s GC capitulation would see the 29-year-old turn his attention to stage victories. But not while Kruijswijk is well placed inside the top five, only trailing secondplaced Geraint Thomas by 15sec.

‘‘That’s definitely how it would normally work but I ran that past the team and it’s not going to be an option for me,’’ Bennett said.

‘‘I have to stay with Stevie and be there in case anything goes wrong. I won’t get that chance but normally that would be a great plan B for someone else in my position on a different team. They would get the freedom to go on a long-range attack and try and get something out of it.’’

Bennett was sitting comfortably in fourth place heading into Tuesday’s 217.5km trek from Saint-Flour to Albi, which was expected to be a relatively stress free day for the general classification contenders.

However, it quickly turned into a disastrous day when he was caught on the wrong side of a split in the peloton while fetching drink bottles from the support vehicle and ended up losing substantial time.

He is now in 27th place, 11min down on Alaphilippe and well out of top-10 contention.

‘‘Nothing changes, it’s still sprints for Dylan [Groenewegen] and GC for Stevie,’’ he said.