Bradley Wiggins: 'Maybe one day Sam Bennett will challenge the King!'
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ByEurosport
Updated 09/09/2020 at 15:00 GMT
Bradley Wiggins and Sean Kelly were effusive in their praise of Irishman Sam Bennett after his stage win at the Tour de France.
Sam Bennett of Ireland and Team Deceuninck - Quick-Step
Image credit: Getty Images
Sam Bennett's stage win at the Tour de France will go down in history, with the rider becoming only the sixth Irishman in history to win a stage at the biggest cycling race in the world.
And speaking on Eurosport show The Breakaway after Stage 10, Bradley Wiggins explained the exhilaration that Bennett must have felt when he found out he'd won.
"I didn’t have the pleasure of doing that (winning a bunch sprint) in the Tour de France; I managed to do it in another race. But you don’t realise you’ve won until you cross that line and it was very tight today, we saw Caleb Ewan push him all the way.
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Pure joy for Bennett as he receives confirmation of historic stage win
"The exhilaration you get from something like that, the adrenaline that’s rushing in the build-up to the sprint, placing yourself, putting yourself in the right position… And Sam’s come close a few times this Tour and there was a risk that he was getting quite frustrated last week when we saw him in some of the sprints.
"But he’s got the monkey off his back with that green jersey and we saw the delight he had when he took that.
"He’s won a stage in each Grand Tour now and maybe one day he’ll challenge the King (Sean Kelly)!" Wiggins added.
It’s phenomenal and he’s got so much more to go in his career. He’s still relatively young in cycling terms, he’s a young sprinter really and we can almost consider him British!
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Emotional Bennett breaks down in tears after winning first ever Tour de France stage
Eurosport pundit Sean Kelly has a close relationship with Bennett, having helped train the sprinter earlier in his career.
"I knew Sam from a young age when he was back in Ireland,” Kelly said. "I remember he had a bad crash and I went to see him in hospital so there’s a lot of history there between myself and Sam.
"He was in my team, the development team, and we took him along for several years to set him on the road for getting in a bigger team.”
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Watch Bennett's winning moment as Irishman takes brilliant stage win
"It’s a major day for Sam, because he has been knocking on the door at the Tour," Kelly continued. "We could see the emotion afterwards. It’s amazing.
"When you crack your first stage in a the Tour de France it’s an amazing feeling. We could see it didn’t hit home for a while.
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‘I was close to shedding a tear too’ – Sean Kelly opens up on Sam Bennett’s stage win
I remember the time when I won my first stage it’s really a bit later you start thinking about it. There’s all sorts of things going through your head. Some guys show emotion immediately, with other guys that emotion is going on in there but they don’t really show it.
"What a day for Sam. When I see Sam doing the interview there after the race it was quite emotional and I was close to shedding a tear.
"You could hear from him, he dreamed about that. You dream of that in your career when you are a fast man and you win your stages as Sam has done at the other two big Tours. Then you come to the Tour de France with big expectations and there’s so much weight on your shoulders.
"He moved to Deceuninck–Quick-Step for the special lead-out train and we saw a special one today. He did talk about the team and he thanked everybody, meaning everybody through his career. But he also mentioned Patrick Lefevere (the Deceuninck owner) so that was in his mind."
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‘Sam has been knocking on the door, this is huge’ – Sean Kelly on Bennett’s stage win
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