Sam Bennett went into the stage 1 sprint at the Tour of Turkey as a marked man, but the 26-year-old Irishman overcame the pressure to deliver the WorldTour stage win for his Bora-Hansgrohe team.
Bennett, who has seven wins so far in 2017, avoided a crash in the final 200 metres to beat Marco Benfatto (Androni Sidermec) and Edward Theuns (Trek-Segafredo) in the high-speed sprint in Kemer.
“I didn't expect people to be afraid of me,” Bennett said of his new-found ‘favourite’ status.
ADVERTISEMENT
“I thought, if we slow up, they'll slow up. But they didn't,” he said. “I felt pressure to come up with a result in the final 2km. My legs felt a bit jelly because of it, but in the end, it worked really well. It's great to be favourite in the sprints. It's a new experience. That is, I've had it before but never in the WorldTour, so I think I learned a lot today about timing and taking control of where I want to go.”
With his team riding the front for much of the 170km stage, the sprint finale was all-but assured. When the breakaway came back on the outskirts of Kemer, Bora-Hansgrohe lined up for the sprinter.
In the end, Shane Archbold led Bennett up the right side of the reduced bunch before Bennett opened up his sprint with around 150 metres to go, eventually finishing a bike length ahead of Benfatto and nailing down one of his team’s first goals for the race.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest News http://ift.tt/2hAc0qV
No comments:
Post a Comment