Most the talk ahead of Friday's stage 6 time trial at the Amgen Tour of California centered around whether stage 5 winner Andrew Talansky (Cannondale-Drapac) would be able to keep his momentum rolling and unseat Rafal Majka (Bora-Hansgrohe) for the overall race lead.
Turns out George Bennett (LottoNL-Jumbo) put in a stellar ride that lifted him into yellow after the 24km race against the clock at Big Bear Lake. No one was more surprised than Bennett himself.
"I think I'm the most surprised guy that watched the time trial or was part of this event," Bennett said in the post-stage press conference. "I mean, yeah, I never thought I'd be there. I look at the profile and I look at the course, it was fast, it was furious. You just needed a lot of power today and that's not what I have.
ADVERTISEMENT
"I don't know where it came from," he said. "I think I just went out there, and if you're familiar with the expression 'twisting a nut,' that's all I can think of." Bennett covered the course in Big Bear, which sits at more than 2,000 metres of elevation, in 28:45, good enough for fourth place behind stage winner Jon Dibben (Team Sky), Brent Bookwalter (BMC Racing) and Talansky. More importantly, he finished 59 seconds ahead of Majka to take the race lead ahead of the Polish rider by 35 seconds. Talansky is now third at 36, with Bookwalter in fourth at 45.
Bennett said he was taken aback when informed in the finishing straight that he had taken the race lead.
"There was a lot of feeling of disbelief at first, but a lot of work had gone into that," he said. "It's not like I got good at time trialling overnight. I trained really hard for it, my coach has put in a huge amount and my team put me through the ringer on positioning and everything like that. I think it's a huge credit to them that I could even finish in the top 10 in a time trial."
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2qHS3Cr
No comments:
Post a Comment