Analysis | The very different Tour outcomes for Sam Bennett and Ben Healy

The Tour de France began with two Irish riders on the start line. Sam Bennett, one of best and most successful cyclists Ireland has ever produced, brought a comeback narrative into the event. Ben Healy, a rapidly emerging talent, is at the start of his journey; building a reputation and palmares.

At 33-years-old, Bennett is not quite at the pipe and slippers stage just yet. But the end of his career is now much closer than the start. After several up and down years, he was coming back to the Tour after four years and needed something from it.

Healy entered the race without a care in the world. He has already secured an extended contract with EF Education-EasyPost until the end of 2026. Aged just 23 years, he already has seven wins as a World Tour rider and has the world at his feet.

But with the dust now settled on Tour de France 2024, what did the two Irish riders take from the race? And what might the implications be for the future? Let’s examine each separately.

Sam Bennett

Bennett last rode the Tour in 2020, winning two stages and the green jersey. But then injury hit, before he moved away from QuickStep and back to Bora-hansgrohe. The combination of those injuries, and being overlooked for selection, meant he was riding his first Tour this year since those heady days of 2020.

He was chasing a stage victory, that always looked like an ambitious aim. There has emerged a new generation of sprinters, now well established, in the four years since he took that incredible win into Paris with the green jersey on his back.

Racing has also changed since then, with the intensity of battle now at fever pitch from start to finish. The eras have changed during Bennett’s career – even in the last three or four years – in more ways than one.

But the big bonus for Bennett was that he was back at the Tour at all, as his was running out of time to get back to the race. That start was facilitated by a move to a smaller, though still World Tour, team in the shape of Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale last winter.

With a whopping 67 career wins in the bank, including 10 stage victories across all three Grand Tours, it is no surprise Bennett spoke so openly before the Tour about being there to win a stage. But there were two home truths from the start.

Firstly, given the standard at this Tour, he was going to have to pull out the kind of performance we hadn’t seen since the early months of 2021 – pre-injury Bennett – if he was going to win a stage.

Secondly, starting the race was a step forward and finishing it would have been a big building block in Bennett’s efforts to get back to where he once was.

There were eight chances for sprinters in the Tour. Bennett did not compete for victory some, though he was in the top 10 three times; 9th on stage 3, 6th on stage 10 and 4th on stage 16.

And though the sprinters’ chances were no more after that improved sprint into Nîmes, the next step was to finish the race. But, sadly, his Tour ended the next day; Bennett dropped early, falling behind on his own and then climbing off.

Bennett has not finished a Grand Tour since that 2020 Tour. The absence of a stage win this time around is no crisis.

The reality is it is going to be very hard – but definitely not impossible – for Bennett to win at the Tour again, and nobody expected a miracle this year. But the fact he did not finish the race, whatever the reason, is the bigger loss.

Bennett is also a rider who has been often underestimated and written off, yet his has been a glittering career.

At the same time, and extending him the respect he deserves, the sight of a 33-year-old would-be comeback sprinter abandoning the Tour de France is not a good one. It simply feeds the narrative the best years are over.

Bennett needs to recover from his Tour experience and, ideally, get a few wins on the board before the season ends. If he were to finish this season strongly – by increasing his 2024 win tally – it would create momentum for winter training and the start of the 2025 campaign. At this point, momentum is badly needed.

Ben Healy

The Tour could only have gone better for Ben Healy if he had one a stage. That was the thing he was chasing and if got away from him several times. Gone are the days when the breakaways were at times permitted to take the day, or the peloton decided to bring them back but misjudged their efforts.

UAE Team Emirates, in particular, were in no mood for groups to get clear and gain big time. Again and again, strong breakaways – with Healy in several – were allowed to get a few minutes, and no further, before being reeled in before the final.

In total, Healy spent five days in breakaways of 100km or more. On stage 14 to Pla d’Adet he proved strongest of the breakaway, the last to be caught by UAE Team Emirates duo Simon Yates and six-time stage winner, and overall victor, Tadej Pogačar.

As well as being the victim of the new style of racing at the Tour, where breakaway are less likely to succeed, Healy was also partly the victim of his own success in recent years. He is now a marked man, meaning any leeway is at a premium.

Illness also set in during the final week, while Healy was also called in to ride for Richard Carapaz as he tried, and succeeded, in chasing a stage victory and the climbers’ classification. However, he also go his own chances – something not all Tour debutants could say.

But one thing is clear from Healy’s Tour – he was stepping up a level in starting the biggest and hardest race of the year, yet he looked every bit as impressive as he has done in other events.
His new marked man status – not exactly new on this Tour, but still relatively new – means he is perhaps going to have to be more strategic in choosing when and where he opens the throttle.

But he is clearly a ride who can do everything; spring classics, Grand Tour mountains and time trialing. Indeed, though his climbing and his attacking were as entertaining as they were impressive, his TT performance on the Tour was perhaps the highlight.

His 9th place finished in the 25.3km stage 7 TT into Gevrey-Chambertin was a world class performance against the best riders in the world who were in their best condition of the year. One downside to that performance, combined with his abilities on the climbs, is that his EF Education-EasyPost team may try and turn him into a general classification rider.

That may muzzle a rider whose best results look likely to come when he is aggressive in a bid to cross the line first, rather than fighting a more measure battle of minutes and seconds in a bid to take a top five in a Grand Tour.

Either way, on Tour de France 2024 Healy prove himself, yet again. He took a step up in the level of racing and excelled physically, while also showing no fear and was clearly not intimidated.

Once he can recover from that bout of illness during the Tour, it will be interesting to see what he can do at the Olympics. That road race in Paris the weekend after next aside, the remainder of the season looks set to bring more chances for for Ben Healy to pen the next exciting chapters in a brilliant career.