There were more than a few riders at the Tour de Langkawi at the end of the 2022 season who looked dejected in what became a last-chance tour for riders facing up to 2023 contractless and with their cycling careers and creams in tatters. Then there was also George Bennett, future secure with a contract in place with one of the world’s top teams, looking as despondent as any, but for him, it was the months and season that had already gone by that were weighing heavily rather than what was ahead. That new season and the clean slate that came with it couldn’t come quickly enough.
“I was pretty much about as cracked as a man can get at the end of a long season,” said the UAE Team Emirates rider, looking back to that Malaysian tour from the sidelines of his first race of the season in Australia. His chipper demeanour was a complete contrast to the Bennett Cyclingnews had spoken to in the clammy conditions of Kuala Klawang as the Tour de Langkawi began to unfold.
The heat and humidity probably didn’t help the energy levels in Malaysia, but there was no hiding how deep a hole he’d found himself in while trying to tunnel back toward what he had hoped would be a rejuvenating first year with UAE Team Emirates, after seven with Jumbo-Visma.
“I think I found it particularly hard having a bad year because I didn’t want them to think, oh ‘what have we done? We’ve signed a dud’,” Bennett told Cyclingnews in a phone interview later in January, where he discussed the trials of 2022 in more depth. “You want to change teams and start well, and that just didn’t happen. I just started terribly and never really got going.”
The setbacks kept coming, one after another, and it turned out to be a season where the light at the end of the tunnel only came when flying away from Langkawi with views of the archipelago nestled in the Andaman Sea and the knowledge that 2022 was in the history books and now it was time to rest and restore.
“I had a great off-season, got home, got to see my family, got to see my friends and had just a really great training block at home, so I’m actually feeling really good,” said Bennett at the start of 2023, looking every bit the rider who was ready to embrace the clean slate of a new season. “I feel like I’m riding well again.”
So what happened in 2022 to make it such a difficult year, and what has changed for 2023?
A really unlucky year
The last time Bennett changed teams was back in 2015 when he was at a different point in…
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