"Hopefully I win a few stages in the Giro d'Italia" - Can Sam Bennett make a mark in 2025's opening Grand Tour?

Once the most feared sprinting force in the entire peloton, Sam Bennett has seen his powers wane slightly over the last few years. Now aged 34, and coming up to three years since his last Grand Tour stage win, can the Irishman still make his mark in the biggest races on the calendar?

If it comes down to a matter of self-belief, Bennett can't be counted out. The Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team sprinter clearly still backs himself to more than compete with the very best in the world. "I still want to win and I put the most pressure on myself," the 10-time Grand Tour stage winner explains in quotes collected by Wieler Revue. " It's true that it can be mentally tough when Danny van Poppel does a good lead-out and I can't finish it (as happened for him at BORA-hansgrohe, ed.), but it's even tougher mentally if I hadn't been there. We've had some nice victories, but not as many as we wanted. That's also what sport is."

Bennett showed flashes of his past brilliance in 2024. Nowhere was this more prominent than at 4 Jours de Dunkerque, where Bennett romped to general classification victory off the back of four stage wins. "Every year, as a sprinter, you want to achieve at least those ten victories," he says determinedly. "That is very difficult these days, but with the right program it is possible. It is about peaking at the right moments."

Although he returned to the Tour de France in 2024, Bennett couldn't recapture the kind of form that saw him take the Green Jersey in 2020. In 2025 though, the Irishman is set to return to the Giro d'Italia for the first time since 2018. "Hopefully I win a few stages in the Giro d'Italia, because that is certainly my main goal until June," the Irishman targets in conclusion.