It's 100 days until the Tour de France, and Sam Bennett could really use a victory. The Carrick on Suir rider is in a puzzling place at the moment.
He’s in his best early-season form in years, yet has a spate of near misses in races.
Sprinters thrive on victories and Bennett knows once he takes one win more will follow, yet he’s come up empty thus far.
"The form is pretty good," he told RTÉ Sport this week. "In Paris-Nice, I did my best-ever 20 minute power. I am climbing super strong. I am doing some of my best rides in years, in terms of power, but the results aren’t showing that at all.
"It’s a positive, but it’s not what you are looking for. You are looking for the results on paper. But it is a good sign when my engine is so big at the minute. I just need to get the sprint.
"The form is good, the results are not so good," he added, laughing.
Bennett was on top of the cycling world in 2020, winning two stages plus the green jersey in the Tour de France. He was the rider to beat that year and also in early 2021, clocking up numerous victories across Europe.
However, a knee injury sidelined him for months and despite periods of decent form, he has missed out on riding the Tour ever since.
Bennett felt a lack of faith from his previous team and moved to the Decathlon Ag2r la Mondiale squad this winter to be one of its designated leaders.
Working with the Irish coach Stephen Barrett, the plan was for him to clock up at least one victory early in the year. He went close: in February he was second on a stage of the Tour de la Provence. This month he was fourth and sixth in stages of Paris-Nice.
Those near-misses were partly down to him, partly down to the move to his new squad.
Decathlon Ag2r la Mondiale has little history as a sprint team and it has taken time for Bennett’s teammates to learn how to put him in exactly the right place inside the final kilometre.
He has also hesitated at crucial moments, his scarcity of victories in recent years introducing self-doubt which didn’t exist before.
But there’s a bigger reason why things haven’t quite clicked thus far. He did a huge amount of work on aerobic conditioning over the winter, and doesn’t yet have the top-end anaerobic power in place.
"Sam needs to do gym work to get that power back," Barrett told RTE. "It’s something that we discussed long and hard in the last few weeks. He has been working with a strength coach here on the team.
"Because his race programme has been quite dense in the past few weeks, we haven’t really carved out that block of time where he can get gym work done.
"Now he’s got back into it again. He’s doing three gym sessions a week. He’s did three sessions this week, then will do Gent-Wevelgem at the weekend. And then we have a little bit of time before Paris-Roubaix where he will do more sessions.
"It’s the missing link really, making sure he’s getting the load he needs in the gym to be able to complement the work on a bike.
"Once Sam gets that, it should bear some fruit."
Sprinters thrive because of their fast-twitch muscle fibres. Those fibres generate the explosive power which enables them to reach huge speeds inside the final kilometre.
That finishing kick has been Bennett’s flair in the sport, an attribute which has seen him clock up 62 victories as a professional.
Even if the number of wins has tapered off since his knee injury back in June 2021, he and Barrett firmly believe he can get back to his best.
"The form is definitely good," Bennett said. "We just have to do a bit more with the gym work to catch up on that, but the VO2 Max, the threshold, the weight, everything is spot on. It’s just the last piece of the puzzle.
"My bread and butter is the sprint, and that’s the one thing we have left to get right.
"It’s been hard to do it because this is a time of year when you have so many important races. The gym work does damage the muscles and takes a long time to recover from that until you get a good base with it."
For now, Bennett takes encouragement from his general performance in races. Sprinters aren’t natural climbers but his aerobic shape is so good that he was still present in the front groups at Paris-Nice long after his sprint rivals were dropped.
He also rode very strongly in the recent Grand Prix de Denain, a French race using stretches of jarring cobblestones like those in the famous Paris-Roubaix.
Still, missing out on a victory this year does play on his mind."It’s frustrating when you know what you’re capable of, when you know what you’ve already done," he said.
"If I had never had the results I’ve had in my career, I’d be like, 'this is just the way it is.’ But when I know what I can do, and I’m not extracting it, then it’s frustrating.
"But it’s in there. I just have to keep fighting and it will come."
Once that win comes, both he and Barrett know the floodgates will open.
"It’s not so much luck, but when you are in that flow, you are winning," Bennett explained. "You can’t make a wrong move then. You just have to break through and get in that flow. Once you do, it’s easy."
Next up is Gent-Wevelgem this Sunday, a tough Belgian one-day race. He is also scheduled for the Paris-Roubaix Classic on 7 April. Between then he will keep logging hours in the gym, doing a lot of explosive efforts to build that anaerobic power.
He will then continue the gym sessions after Roubaix, working to put that last piece of the jigsaw in place.
"Sam’s overall fitness is very, very good," Barrett says. "What we are missing at the moment is just that bit of confidence, and that last bit of the peak power so he can be really competitive in the sprint."
Bennett’s natural ambition is such that he rues the races he might already have won this year.
"It is nice to have the consistency and to be strong, but there’s also a lot of opportunities already missed," he admitted.
"There are positives and negatives, but you have to look at the positives.
"We know what direction we have to take. Going towards the Tour, we know that it is easy to get me into shape. I think Stephen has learned a lot about me. We know what is missing and what we need to do to get the other capacities up."
So, with 100 days to go to the Tour, does he believe he is on track?
"Yeah, normally everything should be in place, even by May," he said. "Especially for the races building up towards the Tour. If the results aren’t there then, then there will be a problem," he laughs.
"But by the start of May it definitely should be there."
Barrett agrees.
"I’m certainly looking forward to seeing how he progresses in the next few weeks. Sam still feels he’s got more to progress, more to improve on, which is good.
"So, 100 days out, I think things are looking positive for summertime."
