SAM BENNETT
COUNTERPOINT
A NEW BEGINNING
Sam Bennett caught the Irish imagination with his Tour green jersey. Can he spark a renaissance for the sport in his home country?
Writer Barry Ryan
Image Thibault Camus/Getty Images
Tony Soprano once observed that ‘remember when’ was the lowest form of conversation, but nostalgia still exerts a pull. When Ireland began its first covid lockdown last year, repeat broadcasts of RTÉ’s retrospective programme Reeling In The Years – archive news footage soundtracked by the hits of the era – regularly featured near the top of the ratings. Maybe it was inevitable that the throwback feel to Sam Bennett’s subsequent achievements at the Tour would play so well to an Irish audience.
A self-effacing man from Carrick-on- Suir winning stages and fighting for the green jersey bore obvious parallels with Sean Kelly’s heroics in the 1980s. Bennett’s success last September was the madeleine that evoked memories of those halcyon summers, attracting daily interest in the Tour from a wider Irish public for the first time since Kelly and Stephen Roche retired.
To those returning, casual observers, the fact that Bennett hailed from Kelly’s hometown and had raced for his team might have hinted at a carefully planned development structure. In truth, not unlike Irish cycling’s greatest generation, Bennett didn’t travel along a clear pathway to the top so much as follow an orienteering course.