Five Julys ago, I penned a few thoughts on the man who sprinted into sporting history in Paris this afternoon, Carrick-on-Suir’s Tour de France Green Jersey winner, Sam Bennett.
A stage victory on the Champs Élysées as the ‘Maillot Vert’ champion, a magnificent feat which eluded both Sean Kelly and Peter Sagan (11 Green Jerseys between them), has singled out the 29-year-old in Irish sporting history. It all seems a far cry from the Lanterne Rouge position which Sam occupied during his maiden Tour attempt back in 2015…
“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” the late author Terry Pratchett once declared, “but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance”.
On a minute by minute basis, the social media vindicates the veracity of Pratchett’s contention, and on Sunday last (July 5, 2015), I recoiled at another example of crass silliness
Someone had suggested that Carrick-on-Suir’s Sam Bennett, who, at the time of writing on Sunday night is placed 171st of the 171 still riding the Tour de France, was, by virtue of his position, an “embarrassment” to this great cycling region.
Of course, the person who posted that comment may well be just one of the many ‘trolls’ online hiding behind a false identity, deriving some odd pleasure from delivering criticism as stupid as it is ill-informed.
Either way, it was pleasing to see so many take to their keyboards that afternoon and promptly kick such idiotic commentary to touch.
A 21-stage, 2,100-mile event, taking in lung emptying, lactic acid-generating ascents of the Alps and Pyrenees represents one of the greatest feats of endurance in professional sport.
To finish it, be one first or 171st, represents an achievement beyond the physical remit of most of who us who frequent the planet. We can’t even attempt to fathom it.
Paul Kimmage recalls viewing a picture taken of him when he completed the 1987 Tour, and the joy etched across his face. Finishing the event was the greatest accomplishment of his professional career, he said last summer.
Mario Cipollini, winner of 12 stages in the great race, never finished any of the eight Tours he rode in. Sam Bennett, despite being in what’s known as the ‘Lanterne Rouge’ position, is just days away from doing something ‘Super Mario’ himself never accomplished.
On Stage 7, Sam crossed the line in 10th place behind the victorious Mark Cavendish, a feat in itself which would have made his Tour debut memorable and justly heralded.
"I kept training but couldn't shake it,” Sam told Paul Kimmage recently about the after-effects of a recent chest infection.
“I had an endoscopy and they found a small tear in my diaphragm, just beside the oesophagus. So it's been pretty stressful.
“Early in the season, you're going into races feeling confident because you've done the work and that confidence gives you an extra five or 10 per cent.
"But I don't have that here. I got 10 days of good work done but that's not exactly how I would have wanted it and I don't know what to expect because it's my first Grand Tour.”
His dad Mick, a Waterford United hero, regularly spoke about “ice in the veins” during his subsequent successful stint as Carrick United manager.
Well, his son shall need that desire to stay the course this seek, the commitment to ride through the pain and make it safely to the ultimate finish line in cycling’s ultimate challenge.
Sam has probably had ice packs aplenty on his weary limbs this past fortnight, but the prize of a Tour finish cannot be underestimated by even the casual cycling observer.
Every rotation of that chain brings Carrick’s latest cycling hero a wheel closer to the Champs Élysées and should he get there, Lanterne Rouge or otherwise, with his torn diaphragm, Sam Bennett will be entitled to some self-satisfaction. And anyone that says otherwise is a fool.
Postscript: Sam rode through 17 stages of the 2015 Tour, by which time his flesh couldn’t equal his ever-willing spirit. He’d been urinating blood for at least five days by the time he dismounted. There was no option but to cry halt to a supreme effort. “Obviously you want the glamour and you want to be in there for the sprints on TV and coming down the Champs Élysées but that isn’t this year,” said Sam. “This year was about getting to another level, trying to develop.”
December 2009, Windgap, South Kilkenny: Sam Bennett, 19 years young, is out on a training spin near Windgap in preparation for the World Track Championships in Beijing, then only just a few weeks away.
Sam collides with a car, breaks his collarbone and sustains head and thigh injuries. His world had come crashing down.
Hotly tipped to progress into the upper echelons of the sport, our locality’s greatest prospect since Sean Kelly, Sam finds himself lying in a hospital bed in Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kilkenny instead of grinding out the miles ahead of the trio to China.
Just three days after that accident, Sam hauls his brittle body onto an exercise bike in the kitchen back home in Carrick. Paul Kimmage called it. This guy is “a bit mad, a bit different.”
Sam is generating zero resistance on the bike – no great surprise there - nonetheless, Sam is determined to get both feet back into the clips as quickly as humanly possible. He pedals, albeit gingerly, but nonetheless he pedals. And as he pedals, Sam screams. Cycling surely never felt like this before. Soon enough he stops. The same instinct that cries ‘enough’ as he urinated blood five and a half years down the road is telling Sam to stop then. So that’s what he does.
“I was getting it hard on the first day and on day five I thought I was gone,” Sam told Sticky Bottle’s Brian Canty. “But I kept fighting each day, I kept going. I knew it was something I had to go through for my development so I wanted to push through it and I think it was important to get as far into the race as possible. I wanted to harden myself and the thought of being a better rider is what kept me going.” So he kept going.
Sunday, September 20, 2020, Paris: The week before his first Tour de France, Sam Bennett barely slept. He wondered aloud to his girlfriend Tara – now his wife – whether he could even take to the start line in Utrecht. He got through 17 stages of his maiden Tour and did enough to make the cycling world take note of a youngster from Carrick-on-Suir, not the first of his ilk to take the roads of France with dreams of making it big. And today, he carved out his own niche in Tour history – and how.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am,” he said in the wake of today’s final stage into Paris. “The green jersey, the Champs-Élysées, the world championships of sprinting, I never thought I ever be able to win this stage, and to do it in green is so special, and for my dream team, Deceuninck-Quick-Step. The way the boys rode all, they were fantastic, it’s just such an amazing feeling. Yeah, all that suffering during the mountains, so worth it now. All the years trying to come up, trying to make it, it took me so long to get here, I’m just going to enjoy every moment of it.”
Sam continued: “If you told me this, three weeks, no, I wouldn’t have believed you (to win the Green Jersey and the final stage). It’s a dream I never really knew I had, because I never thought I’d be good enough to do it, never thought I’d be strong enough to do it. So never even dreamed of doing it.
“I’m still not trying to take it all in, because I get too emotional. It’s been amazing, and definitely a tear in my eye entering the Champs-Élysées All the support from home too has been amazing.
“So yeah, super proud, a very special moment in my career. I can’t compare this green jersey race to other years, because I wasn’t in it, I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn’t fully understand what’s involved. You’re racing some stages against pure sprinters, racing guys for the points jersey, so you’re almost involved in two races. Then trying to get in the breakaway, or watching the right riders, then the intermediates, the bunch sprints, every day there is work to be done, so many people to watch. So I was a very hard thing to do, might be my only chance to ever do it, so pretty proud of it.
“But this is about the team too, I can’t thank them enough, they got me through the mountains, the intermediate sprints, helped me control the points jersey on and off the bike, they’ve been absolutely fantastic. I definitely wouldn’t be standing here in green without them.”
The great American basketball coach John Wooden could have been referencing Sam Bennett’s iron-willed tenacity when he said the following:
“Most all good things come through adversity. There’s a poem that says: ‘Looking back it seems to me, All the grief that had to be Left me when the pain was o’er Stronger than I was before’. “I believe that. We get stronger when we test ourselves. Adversity can make us better. We must be challenged to improve, and adversity is the challenger.”
Sam Bennett’s greatest ever opponent will never be Peter Sagan, Caleb Ewan or anyone else he goes into the battle with once the peleton catches sight of the finishing line. The Sam Bennett that was on the bike yesterday is the guy Sam Bennett will want to outdo above all others tomorrow.
And right now, outperforming himself is proving good enough to see off the world’s best. Chapeau, Sam. Carrick couldn’t be prouder of you.
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