While the Tour De France rumbles on this July, Carrick-On-Suir's Sam Bennett is at home. The reigning green jersey holder, who romped to victory on the Champs-Élysées last September was not selected for this year's event, with a prolonged knee injury proving too much to overcome in time for the showpiece Grand Tour.
Marc Cavendish, the 2011 Green Jersey winner joined Deceuninck–Quick-Step earlier this year and showed great form in some of the early season outings - proving that father time had not yet come calling.
Since the Tour De France team announcements were made, and the race got underway, Bennett's team manager Patrick Lefevere has pointed his attention towards his sidelined 2020 star. It was confirmed by Lefevere that Bennett would not be riding for Quick-Step next year and while his next team is yet to be confirmed, it's expected that he could make a return to Bora-Hansgrohe, or even make the jump to Ineos-Grenadiers where his fellow Irish man Eddie Dunbar plies his trade.
The fact that Bennett is leaving his current team has drawn the ire of his Belgian Director Sportif, who spoke to Het Laatste Nieuws earlier this month saying "He first wept like a small child when he left Bora-Hansgrohe and 14 months later he signs with the same team because he got a little more money. That says more about him than about me. I have balls on my body, he doesn’t.”
Speaking to WLR Sport, Irish Times sports writer Ian O Riordan was unsure of what the ploy from Lefevere is supposed to achieve. The manager has previous history with other riders where the relationship soured when they indicated their intentions to leave - Marcel Kittel and Philippe Gilbert to name a few.
"I think it's a strange one on many levels. Just think about some of the sports whether it's GAA or even the Premiership managers, and just how careful they are by saying anything negative about their players, and here we have Patrick Lefevere. Now he has a bit of history here. This is kind of his tactic. If you're winning stages - you're a hero, and he's a he's one of these people who genuinely kind of kisses you up and then almost kicks you when you're down. If you're not doing well. He's like, 'well, what's wrong with you? Are you weak? Are you and are you faking injury or whatever?' This is exactly what's unfolding now with Sam Bennett"
"I suppose that's when the problem began, if you go back to May when it was announced that Sam Bennett was leaving Deceuninck–Quick-Step. This was kind of surprising for a couple of reasons. They don't normally announce these kinds of moves until later in the season, in fact you're not officially supposed to announce a move until August 1st."
"So Lefevere automatically kind of broke tradition there. Then of course, once Sam Bennett got injured, this was towards the middle of June, when we kind of realized, well, would he even make the Tour de France? This is when the kind of mind games started to kick off."
"Lefevere was saying things like 'is Bennett really injured? Is he just weak-minded? What's going on here?' and this is when he was still supposed to race I think and then within a matter of days, they announced Marc Cavendish as his replacement."
All the while, the Carrick man has remained quite and allowed the talk to come from one side of the fence only. The unfortunate element of this whole sorry scenario is that Cavendish has been going very well at this year's Tour. He's claimed two stage wins is comfortably wearing the green jersey with a 55 point gap between himself and Michael Matthews in second. At this same time in last year's Tour, Sagan had a narrow seven-point lead over Bennett.
"He's been quite coy and cautious about saying anything and I mean, I've no doubt the guy was injured. I mean, anybody who Sam Bennett will tell you that you don't fake injuries like that and he was absolutely up for this Tour de France"
"It's a dirty tactic. I can't imagine too many managers would go around saying that to belittle their riders so that the next manager might not offer them as much money. But that's the only explanation for it. Like, why else would you say that other than, you know, if Bennett does go to, whether it's a Bora next year, or Ineos Grenadiers, they're going to think, 'well what was Lefevere saying about him?' So yeah, it's a dirty tactic. But look, that's the way he deals, that's the way he's operating"
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RUE2xTGErBwuDiom5r8yh?si=776d4bb750074a52
