After months of frustration due to a knee injury which forced him to miss the Tour de France, Sam Bennett has spoken about his improving situation on the weekend of Cycling Ireland’s national road race championships. Bennett returned to competition several weeks ago in the European road championships and then went on to compete in two events for his Deceuninck-QuickStep team. Although he is yet to finish a race, he is hoping to ride solidly in Sunday’s elite and under-23 road race, which is being held at The Beehive in Co. Wicklow.
“Everything’s kind of going to plan for the weekend,” he told the Irish Times. “I think this is my fifth week on the bike. I’m kind of aware there’s no miracles in cycling so, yeah, I’m just going in kind of open-minded.
“I did everything I could be to be as fit as possible but obviously it won’t be until next year that I’m really fit again. But I suppose I am really motivated, just because I’m after three months off the bike, really, which hopefully will play to my advantage.”
Bennett won the national road race championships in 2019 and while he is not in anything like the same form as then, and may well be under pressure on a tough course on Sunday, he voices general optimism about how his knee is recovering and how his fitness is building. His big objective is to be back in winning form for 2022, but he knows that riding well on Sunday would move things forward physically and mentally.
“Everything’s going good. I feel okay. My knee is getting better and better,” he said. “It is pretty much perfect now. Sunday’s just about the circuit and how it will be raced. It has to go right on the day, but I can’t expect much.
“I think Nico [Nicolas Roche] designed the course, and it will really suit Eddie [Dunbar] and Nico. And then you have a lot of strong guys with [Ryan] Mullen, Ben Healy, and a lot of the domestic riders will be flying. For sure it can be the case where a domestic rider wins the nationals…it has happened many times before. So it should be pretty good race and I think a very high standard here, actually.
“I’m looking forward to racing on home roads. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know if I have more than two to three hours of racing in the legs, and unfortunately the Nationals will take about four hours. But we’ll see what we can do, and just try to enjoy it.”
