Sam Bennett tips Ben Healy as Ireland’s top hope on ‘really hard’ world championship circuit

Sam Bennett is lining out in cycling’s world road race championships on Sunday hoping to ride strongly, praying for a sprint, but admitting that Ireland’s best chances may lie instead with Ben Healy.

Bennett has spent time at altitude preparing for the worlds in Glasgow and withdrew early from the Tour de Pologne in Poland this week in order to be rested and ready for Sunday’s big target.

However, after riding the tough course in Glasgow, he sounds quite uncertain that things will play out in the way he and other sprinters will have hoped.

“I rode the circuit today and it’s hard. It’s really hard,” he told The Irish Times this week. “280 k[ilometres], it is going to be one line for so long, and there’s only one or two places to really move up. If you’re out of position or if you get a mechanical, it’s over. Like, you don’t come back, because you can’t use [slipstream team] cars, you can’t do anything, there’s just no place to sit. There’s no place for teams to really pull and make ground. So it’s a tough one.”

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Bennett suggests that if the weather remains dry, there is a chance that a select group, or reduced peloton, could sprint it out for the win. He has his doubts, though, expecting instead that things could be far more fragmented.

“I think it’s going to be twos and threes, just because it’s too technical,” he said. “It’s all one line for a lot of it. And it’s all up and down, there’s no real flat. It’s constantly changing gradients.”

Still, even if that complicates things for the Carrick-on-Suir rider, he sees advantages for another in the green jersey.

“I think if Ireland has Ben [Healy] up the road, they don’t see him again. That’s probably our best bet to be world champ at the end of the week.”

Bennett, Healy, a breakaway specialist who won a stage in this year’s Giro d’Italia, Ryan Mullen, Rory Townsend, Cormac McGeough and Dillon Corkery are Ireland’s selection for the Elite men’s road race. It started at 9.30am and was expected to run until approximately 4pm, although those timings have been put back due to a protest.

“I think it’s going to be aggressive racing to the circuit because everybody sees how technical it is,” he predicted. “So it’s going to be hard. And you enter the circuit quite early. It’s going to produce something [special], it’s going to be a great race to watch.”

Ireland had a number of competitors in action on Saturday. Oisín O’Callaghan finished a fine 12th in the elite men’s downhill world championship final, with Chris Cumming 42nd, Conor Bate 49th and Niall Clerkin 51st.

Paracycling rider William Clifford was eighth in the MC3 scratch race, a fine showing in what was his first time competing in a bunch race on the track, while Chris Burns was ninth 9th in the MC2 scratch race.

Lucy Benezet Minns and Áine Doherty finish 32nd and 50th respectively in the junior women’s road race, and Seth Dunwoody was 69th in the junior men’s event.

Ryan Henderson went in the qualifying of the BMX Freestyle Park and while he did not make it through to the semi-final, he amassed important experience.