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Unless disaster strikes, Irishman Bennett will make a childhood dream come true on Sunday in Paris as he rushes down the Champs-Elysees resplendent in the green jersey as the winner of the Tour de France points classification.
The 29-year-old has a 55-point lead over seven-time winner and three-time world champion Peter Sagan, and while losing is possible, Bennett will finish out of the top eight and Sagan or Matteo Trentin (CCC Team) will win the stage to Let the Irishman hand over the green jersey.
However, given the way he’s ridden since the race left rain-lashed Nice nearly three weeks ago, few would bet on that result, and he’s certainly not the only man who has supervised his race since hitting the gas. for the first time in two decades. does.
Martin O’Loughlin can take his share of the credit for molding Bennett into the rider he is today, the schoolmaster guided him through those formative years when the young prodigy raced locally at Carrick-on-Suir and Clonmel.
“I saw Sam for the first time when I was nine and I recognized that he had something special then,” O’Loughlin said.
“I was winning mountain biking league races with ease since I was nine years old, despite being severely handicapped by two of the true mainstays of cycling in Ireland, Bobby Power and Paul Lonergan.
“Sam was always very dedicated, but he trained too much. He often did too many difficult things and not easy enough to allow him to do some serious speed and speed work. ”Blessed with a devastating finishing kick, Bennett was a prolific winner at all junior ranks, in his junior years. and U23, but he faced some real tests of his character along the way.
“I never lost faith in him but you need luck in cycling and he gave it up for almost three seasons,” O’Loughlin continued, in part referring to a terrible head-on collision with a car that could so easily have finished more than one promising race. .
There was a lengthy rehab, a subsequent drop in form and questions about whether Bennett could return.
“Due to her mother’s charming off-bike personality and her father’s drive and determination on the bike, I never had any doubts.
“He has great people around him at home, and that’s one of his strongest assets outside of the bike,” continued O’Loughlin, himself a very capable rider and coach of Cycling Ireland.
On his Deceuninck – Quick Step team, Bennett might not have started this Tour de France as team leader, because that title was awarded to French favorite Julian Alaphilippe.
But all that changed when Bennett claimed a wonderful stage 10 in a thrilling sprint, claimed the green jersey, before quickly breaking down in tears on live television.
That the aforementioned Alaphilippe struggled to stay in shape has only raised the spotlight on Bennett, but he has reveled in it for the first time in his career and has shown a maturity that has often deserted him.
“I have learned a lot about myself in recent weeks,” he told reporters after yesterday’s 19th stage.
“I learned that Sagan is an absolute beast, as if he doesn’t already know. But I also saw that I’m not such a bad pilot either. I’m quite well.
“I’m getting a lot of support at home and it’s been fantastic,” he added. “For me, it’s the confidence booster I needed to remind me that yes, I am one of the best in cycling.” Sprinting is a high-stakes game in which the margin of error is so small that often the width of one tire diverges from the first to the second.
“The margins between all the best sprinters are very thin,” O’Loughlin acknowledged.
“In their day, Sam and Dylan Grownewegen are the fastest. Caleb Ewan is the strongest in a headwind because he can be very aerodynamic. And in an uneven ending, Sam has more than one trick available so he’s obviously up there in the world now and I think the general public is starting to see that now.
“Three weeks ago, I felt that the media and the public may not have given Sam the recognition he deserved when he started the race, but since winning that stage he has been front-page news. And not just sports news. It has arrived and is now almost a household name in Ireland.
“I’m on my bike or in town and the kids are calling me Sam Bennett from the road, and that’s cool to see.
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