IT’S NOT EASY WINNING GREEN
Even when Sam Bennett was interviewed after stage 10, it still hadn’t sunk in that he had won his first Tour stage. “I forgot to throw the bike at the line and I thought he might have got me,” the Irishman said, almost to himself, in a panic as if someone was going to come in and take it away.
He’d gone through the same routine with his team-mates a few minutes earlier. “Did I get it?” he asked. “Yeah, but did I really win it? It was so close I don’t trust it,” he repeated, in between hugs of congratulation.
As the realisation that he had won his first Tour stage became that bit little less of a dream and a little more reality, even the barrier of the face mask Bennett was obliged to wear couldn’t hide the emotions. Relief, shock, happiness and everything in between: memories of the failures, the setbacks, the people he had to thank flashed through his mind, as he put his head in his hands and cried.
If the 2020 Tour had a feelgood victory, Bennett’s
