The Carrick-On-Suir man, who won his first Tour de France stage yesterday, was bidding to become the first Irish cyclist to win consecutive stages in the world’s most famous cycle race, and was hoping to emulate his fellow ‘Carrick’ man, Seán Kelly, who the first of his five Tour de France stages in Poitiers in 1978.

Wednesday’s 167.5 kilometres stage from Châtelaillon-Plage went to Australian Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal), who was taking his second stage in this year’s event, with Peter Sagan second across the line and Bennett third.

When officials reviewed the race finish, Sagan was deemed to have shoved Jumbo-Visma sprinter Wout van Aert in the closing metres and was relegated to 85^th place, last in the finishing bunch sprint.

This meant Bennett was promoted to second, earning him more green jersey points, to add to the points he claimed earlier in the day when taking second behind breakaway leader Matthieu Ladagnous at the intermediate sprint.

“I don’t really know what happened it was so hectic,” admitted Bennett. “It (the final sprint) was hard to make the switch from following my teammate to going alone. I found myself too far forward too early and then I was trying to drift back and it was a bit late to drift back. Then they came at speed – it was just a complete mess. I just tried to limit my losses and get the best result I could.”

The Irish rider is now on 234 points, 68 points ahead of seven-time points’ classification winner Sagan on 175, with Frenchman Bryan Coquard third on 157.

Race leader Primoz Roglic from Slovenia maintains his lead over the defending Tour champion Egan Bernal.

Dan Martin and Nicolas Roche finished in 133rd and 138^th respectively on today’s stage, with Martin maintaining his position as the leading Irish rider in this year’s race. The Israel Start-Up Nation rider is 64^th on the general classification, with Roche 75^th and Tuesday’s stage winner Bennett 139^th, almost two-and-a-half hours behind the yellow jersey wearer.

Stage 11 result

1. Caleb Ewan (Lotto Soudal) 4hrs 00mins 01secs
2. Sam Bennett (Deceuninck-Quick-Step) same time.
3. Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) same time.

General classification after stage 11

1. Primoz Roglic (Jumbo-Visma) 46hrs 15mins 24secs.
2. Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers) + 21secs.
3. Guillaume Martin (Cofidis) + 28secs.

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Bennett, who became the first Irish cyclist to wear the green jersey since Seán Kelly, gained six points on the day’s intermediate sprint to increase his lead over his current main rival for the jersey, Sagan. With Bennett set to spend a second day in green on Friday, he will match the feat of his fellow Irishman, Stephen Roche, in 1987.

“Wearing this jersey today was amazing, a lovely experience”, Bennett proudly admitted. “People applauded me, I heard my name as the stage progressed, and to see the support I got was just beautiful. Coming into the Tour it wasn’t a goal, but it would be a huge honour to win it. I know it’s still a long way to Paris and a lot of work has to be put in to conquer this jersey, but I will take it day by day and see what happens”, the Waterford rider said of his first day’s experience of wearing the green jersey.

The day’s eight-man breakaway included Team Sunweb’s Nicolas Roche, who won two King of the Mountain points before a difficult finish, which saw the group splinter on the day’s principal climb, the Col de la Lusette, late in the 191km stage from Le Teil.

Roche, who won the stage’s combativity award as the day’s most aggressive rider, is now third overall in the polka-dot rankings, on 11 points, behind leader Benoit Cosnefroy on 23 points and Michael Gogl on 12.

Adam Yates, who yesterday became the ninth Briton to wear the Tour de France’s yellow jersey, retained the race leadership following today’s stage.

Nicolas Roche finished 56th in the stage, seven minutes and seven seconds down on the stage victor Lutsenko and now finds himself in 44th place overall, 11 minutes and 59 seconds behind Yates.

Israel Start-Up Nation’s Dan Martin was 71^st today and now finds himself in 76th position in the general classification, almost 40 minutes behind the race leader.

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Alaphilippe, who was involved in one of the many crashes on the opening stage of the race on Saturday, launched a perfectly-timed attack on the final climb of the day, the Col des Quatre Chemins, before outsprinting former World U-23 champion Marc Hirschi of Nicolas Roche’s TeamSunweb and Adam Yates of Mitchelton-Scott.

Sunday’s stage, which brought the riders into the high Alps with ascents of both La Colmiane and the Col de Turini, saw Philippe Gilbert (Lotto-Soudal) and Rafael Valls (Bahrain-McLaren) fail to start due to a fractured kneecap and femur respectively, it really is like playing on Gclub with the fun and excitement.

In an eventful day on the 107^th Tour de France, Alaphilippe attacked with 13km to go. Hirschi (Team Sunweb), the eventual stage runner-up, went across to him while Tom Dumoulin of Jumbo-Visma) crashed after touching the back wheel of Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos).

Britain Adam Yates (Mitchelton-Scott) counter-attacked and rejoined Alaphilippe and Hirschi at the front. Yates took the 8 seconds bonus at the top, before Alaphilippe and Hirschi, with an advantage of 20 seconds over the peloton. They kept the same gap until the final kilometre before Alaphilippe outsprinted Hirschi, with Yates crossing the finishing line in third place.

A tearful Alaphilippe, whose father Jo died in June, dedicated the victory to him.

“It’s always a special emotion to win on the Tour” he said, “but this is a special year. I haven’t won a race since the beginning of the season, although I’ve always continued to work hard despite the difficult moments. I just wanted to dedicate this victory to my dad. It meant a lot to me and I’m happy I did it.”

A chasing pack of 32 riders came in just two seconds behind Alaphilippe, with Greg Van Avermaet (CCC) taking fourth place ahead of Sergio Higuita (EF Pro Cycling) and Bauke Mollema (Trek-Segafredo).

Despite crashing on the final ascent after touching wheels with Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos), General Classification contender Tom Dumoulin (Jumbo-Visma) came home in that group among the principal overall contenders, though Critérium du Dauphiné winner Dani Martínez (EF Pro Cycling) came home 3:38 down following his crash.

Stage 1 winner and yellow jersey wearer today Alexander Kristoff (UAE Team Emirates) struggled and came home over half an hour behind the stage victor.

Nicolas Roche was the first of the three Irishmen home today, as the Nice-based rider finished in 24th, 17 seconds behind Alaphilippe. Dan Martin was 17 minutes 45 seconds behind in 100th while Sam Bennett, who was fourth on Saturday’s opening stage, finished 168^th, 28 minutes 55 seconds behind his stage-winning teammate.

In the overall standings, Alaphilippe holds a lead of 4 seconds over Yates with Hirschi of Switzerland a further 3 seconds back in third, while Higuita and the other GC contenders are 17 seconds behind the Frenchman.

Nicolas Roche is 26^th overall, 17^th seconds off the yellow jersey, Dan Martin is 101^st at 18 minutes down, while Sam Bennett is 149^th, 29 minutes and 10 seconds behind the race leader.

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The son of Irish cycling legend Stephen, Nico, is “pretty excited (as) I’ve been looking forward to this Tour for over a year now. Starting in Nice, I was looking forward to it in November when they announced it.”

This will in fact be the third time in the 36-year-old’s career that the Grand Boucle has started in the Nice area, with the riding adding: “I’ve also been lucky with the Tour in Ireland so I can’t complain with the itineraries.”

Since November’s announcement of the Grand Départ in the south east of France, Nicolas had been looking forward to racing on roads he knows very well, in front of his family and school friends who were “looking forward to coming here and enjoying the Tour de France, obviously it’s a little bit different now,” he adds.

Despite the usual start time of August for the Tour de France every rider is at the same stage of fitness and preparation due to the postponement and rescheduling of some of the season’s main races:

“2020 you just have to reset your standards and create a new normality. We’re all at the same point, it’s no different for anyone”, Nicolas explains. “For me it was key that the Tour de France happened and they’ve managed luckily enough to have it this time of the year – we just have to adapt”, he says matter of factly.

He continues by reiterating that all participants starting Saturday’s Tour are equal, and not one of them has an advantage over the other as a result of the enforced interruptions to the 2020 season:

“We’re all at the same standards and it’s the same for everybody – I’m actually happy we can start and get on with it because it’s so important for us athletes, but also for teams, the media and the business as a whole.”

While the Nice-based rider was in lockdown in France, initially for a fortnight, and then for an extended period of time, he trained at home on the balcony, a regime which was blended in with the rest of his training. With most teams organising new schedules after the Covid-19 lockdown, new training camps were tried to get ready in the best way for the Tour de France.

Looking back now on his training regime during what should have been a busy part of the racing season, Roche professes to having “trained like a maniac on the trainer” as he always believed the 2020 season would be rescued in some way.

“Everyone was asking me afterwards why did you train so hard? It’s easy to look back today and say I should have backed off because the Tour (de France) is in August but back in the lockdown, initially it was only a 2 week lockdown and racing and the Olympics and everything was still going to happen.”

The former Irish Road Race champion continues explaining about his mindset:

“It’s easy to say now, Nico you trained too hard on your home trainer but back then in early March we had no idea what was going to happen. Most people thought the Tour of Romandie was going to happen the first week of May, so for me it was about doing two weeks on the home trainer and that was it. And then after two weeks, they said it was going to be four weeks.”

With local knowledge of roads always an important factor in the sport, Nicolas feel with the unseasonal forecast for this weekend, his local insight may be an advantage to his and his team’s safety on the opening weekend of Le Tour.

“You know the good parts of the road but you also know the bad parts of the road. They’re forecasting storms for tomorrow (Saturday) and I know that these roads are lethal in the wet and I have a little bit of fear of the rain on the roads as it hasn’t rained here for a while so they could be greasy”, he warns.

Looking ahead to Sunday’s second stage, the Irish rider says the weather could potentially make racing conditions dangerous:

“Sunday’s stage is quite tricky as well and we go quite high at altitude so that will be a little more problematic if it rains. In this Tour we’re going to get some heavy showers, we’re going to get thunderstorms, we’re going to get maybe snow as it’s very common it snows in the month of September in France.”

He emphasizes that we could witness a radical change in weather conditions throughout the three weeks of racing:

“We’re in Nice, south of France, the end of August, it should be 25 degrees of sun and the day of the Tour (start) it’s going to rain and it’s probably going to be sun again next week when we leave again. I think our issue this year is going to be the real radical change of weather that we could have: 25 degrees one day and 5 degrees and rain the other day, and that is really difficult on your body.”

If the conditions are right on Sunday, Roche is adamant the route would suit a breakaway:

“It’s (Sunday) a perfect day for a breakaway as it’s really difficult. It is a really really open stage and I think on TV we could see some great racing as the roads are perfect for it.”

With Team Sunweb undertaking their first Grand Tour since the departure of Tom Dumoulin, meaning the German outfit will not have General Classification ambitions, what exactly is Nicolas Roche’s role?

“My role here is pretty open. The team has come with a sprinter’s train and then four all-rounders; we have no interest in the General Classification. Our role is to take it day by day and try and make the most of the day, so on those 4 or 5 flatter stages I will be in a little bit of support of the sprinter’s team. It doesn’t mean I’ll be doing lead-out, but it means that in the last 20km I’ll help to position the train so they don’t have to commit too early so they actually do their own lead-out. At about 20km to go, I get into position and ride for about 10km to keep them out of the way and keep them safe when we start this drag racing. Then I swing off when the race gets a little crazier and I get out of the way for the sprint.”

While success for Team Subweb would be a stage win, or wins, Nico feels he may finally achieve that coveted Tour de France stage win to add to his 3 previous Grand Tour stage successes.

“Obviously a stage win is something I have been chasing now for the last couple of years and have been so close so many times but I haven’t managed to nail it. There are a lot of opportunities in the Tour. There are a lot of higher mountain stages that are going to be very tough but there are also a lot of medium mountain stages where usually breakaways have a better chance to ride – so my goal would be to get those opportunities. One of my dreams when I was a child was to win a stage in the Tour de France. I haven’t done that yet so I’m still chasing that dream – that would be a very successful Tour” he acknowledges.

Belgian Toesj Benoot will lead Roche’s Team Sunweb and will be accompanied by sprinters Cees Bol from the Netherlands and German Nikias Arndt. Rouleurs Søren Kragh Andersen of Denmark and Jasha Sutterlin from Germany will add strength to the team to assist talented young riders Swiss Marc Hirschi and Dutchman Joris Nieuwenhuis who will be making their Grand Tour debuts.

Le Tour de France 2020, beginning on Saturday with what Nico describes as “apparently one of the toughest weeks ever in the Tour de France – definitely the toughest week I’ve done”, the Grand Tour will then wind its way around France before ending in Paris on September 20.

Nicolas Roche will be joined by fellow Irish riders Sam Bennett of Deceuninck – Quick Step and Dan Martin of Israel Start-Up Nation in “the hardest race, the most beautiful race.”

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Bardet, an experienced climber, has tasted success at the Tour de France where he won three stages, finished both second and third on General Classification along with achieving two sixth place finishes, and claiming the famous polka dot jersey as King of the Mountains.

Speaking of his move to Team Sunweb, where he will join Irish cyclist Nicolas Roche, the Frenchman said:

“I am very happy to have signed for Team Sunweb. When considering options outside my current team, it was really important for me to find a team that works progressively, involving the latest technology in equipment and other domains. I also wanted a team with a clear vision on the sport and one that is a member of MPCC.”

Further explaining his decision to sign with Team Sunweb, Bardet added:

“At Team Sunweb I have the opportunity to start with no specific expectations or a specific race to target. Instead we will focus first on the basics and the fundamentals, working hard and with dedication to improve on all different areas as an athlete – after this we will look to race schedules and goals. This opportunity comes at the right moment in my career and I am very motivated to start working with the team and its group of very promising riders. I want to express my thanks to my current team AG2R La Mondiale, who helped me to develop until now, my time with them will always have a special place in my memories.”

Despite his impressive climbing result, 29-year-old Bardet can’t be pigeonholed as only a pure climber as the French rider has also excelled in one-day races. He took a silver medal at the World Championships in Innsbruck, was third place at Liège-Bastogne-Liège and took second place in brutal conditions at Strade Bianche, showing himself to be a versatile and tactically aware cyclist on a variety of terrain.

Bardet has been a professional since 2012 and brings a wealth of experience of competing at the highest level in the biggest races to the team’s blossoming pool of promising riders.

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