🎙️ "It's hard to explain just how strong that guy is." George Bennett about teammate Marco Frigo's incredible show of strength in the breakaway today. Grande, Marco! #LaVuelta24 #YallaIPT
"It was horrible, no one helped us" - George Bennett jumps into Top10 with La Vuelta breakaway but is disappointed with lack of collaboration
CyclingThursday, 29 August 2024 at 13:42
Stage 11 of the Vuelta a España was another day for the breakaway, and amongst the many dozens of riders present in the group, George Bennett was the one who benefited the most. He was very grateful to his teammates at the end of the day, but at the same time very disappointed with the lack of other collaborators in the group.
Bennett also wanted to go for the stage win but couldn't make the difference on the final climb, and then didn't have the right timing for a move in the final kilometer. "We wanted the stage, I thought I had it all lined up, and then Eddie [Dunbar] went, it just got so close. What Eddie did was exactly what I was trying to do, and he just did it so well," Bennett said in words to Cyclingnews. "I'm really disappointed because you saw how well the boys were going". Bennett very much relied on his teammates to do most of the work in the final hours of racing to keep the breakaway ahead of the peloton.
[Marco] Frigo it's hard to explain how strong that guy is, he was pulling that whole break, I'd say he did 98% of that. He was so fast, when I was on the wheels I was just dying," the Kiwi admits. "Corbin {Strong] and Matthew [Riccitello] also - they all did so much for me, even when a little group went away before the climb, they pulled so fast on the climb that we just got back to it. So I can't help but feel disappointed right now." Bennett managed to win 3:27 minutes on the Primoz Roglic group, and jumped to 10th place, 5:46 minutes away from race leader Ben O'Connor. But that wasn't because of a smooth day in the front group.
"It was horrible, no one helped us. I think no-one had GC guys there apart from us, so we were the only ones that… in fact it was the opposite, lot of guys had GC riders in the peloton and they were actively slowing it down. It was a horrible dynamic, the whole group was a shithouse, if it wasn't for Corbin, Marco and Matthew, we probably wouldn't have stayed away."
Bennett has been fighting for the GC over the first week of the race and now benefited from a smart move. He is Israel - Premier Tech's card to finish high in the standings and will attempt to finish on the Top10 of a Grand Tour for the first time since the 2018 Giro d'Italia. "It'd be really cool to finish top ten, I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at it. But I'd much rather be going for a stage, I've never won one. So I'll be looking for more opportunities to get one in the next ten days," he concluded.
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