How Aqua Blue’s demise led to Sam’s Bennett Decathlon Ag2r La Mondiale move

By Shane Stokes

At the time, the August 2018 bombshell that the Aqua Blue Sport team was stopping was a huge blow to Irish cycling. The team’s demise put three Irish riders and several Irish staff out of a job, as well as affecting dozens of others from different countries.

It also brought to an end Ireland’s only Pro Continental team, a gap that has never been filled since.

It’s now over five years since that collapse, yet the effects of that are still playing out. In late November it was announced that Sam Bennett had signed a two year contract with the Decathlon Ag2r La Mondiale squad, becoming one of its biggest signings.

Bringing him on board has changed the approach of the team, with the previous GC targeting of races now to be supplemented by a sprint focus.

But why did Bennett choose to go there, given that it is twenty years since the team was winning bunch gallops at the Tour with Jaan Kirsipuu? One major reason was the presence of Irish coach Stephen Barrett.

“It was a big, big part of my decision,” Bennett told stickybottle recently. “He was the real connection with the team. How he presented the team and himself gave me a lot of excitement and confidence that it was the best direction for my career to take.”

Barrett played GAA and other sports for many years. He studied sports science in Waterford IT, and did a masters in physiology in Loughborough in England. That city was the main hub for the British team for the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, handing him opportunities to work with British triathlon and British Cycling, and to be surrounded by top level coaches.

Drawn to cycling, Barrett raced for several years. He rode the An Post Rás as part of the Irish national team in 2009, returned in 2010 and was also in the green jersey at a number of UCI track World Cup events.

Periods of time as a university lecturer and coaching of GAA players followed, with some guiding of local riders. He then got a phone call from Aqua Blue Sport and worked there as head of performance in 2017 and 2018.

And then AG2r La Mondiale came calling.

“I went to the Tour de France in 2018, the Grand Depart was in Nantes,” Barrett tells stickybottle. “There is a conference before the Tour de France every year called the Science of Cycling conference and I got asked to do a talk there.

“I remember saying to my wife, ‘do we want to go? It’s a bit of a pain in the ass getting to Nantes.’ But in the end, she convinced me to go.”

Barrett did so, and gave a presentation about some of the research and the coaching philosophy he had incorporated into his work with Aqua Blue.

The head of performance of the Ag2r team happened to be in the audience that day and later got in contact with Barrett.

“He sent me an email asking if I would be interested in coming on board as a coach with Ag2r. I was like, ‘absolutely not, I don’t speak French.’ And Ag2r was a team that wasn’t exactly high on list of sexy teams. Then two days later, Aqua Blue imploded.”

Barrett said his initial focus was on trying to help the riders left stranded without teams. He helped Irish champion Conor Dunne, the American Larry Warbasse and others to get contracts rather than focussing on his own situation.

“For me, if my time as a cycling coach finished then I would have been fine,” Barrett says. “I was still lecturing in Waterford IT.

“Then the Ag2r head of performance came back to me again, and said, ‘how about now?’ I was like, ‘I don’t think so.’

“But he convinced me to fly to Lyon and meet him there. He spoke no English, I spoke no French. But we just had a connection and started from there. And now 2024 is my sixth year in the team.”

“He’s been bitten by the bug”

In the seasons since coming on board, Barrett has been building his career with the squad. He has focused his attention on the English speaking riders there and, notably, has guided riders to some standout performances. These include Tour de France stage wins via Ben O’Connor, Bob Jungels, and Felix Gall in 2021, 2022 and 2023 respectively.

That sequence is an impressive claim to fame.

At the same time Bennett’s career was on an undulating path. Overlooked by Bora-hansgrohe for the 2019 Giro d’Italia and Tour de France, he moved to Deceuninck-QuickStep and Tour de France glory in 2020. Two stage wins there plus the green jersey was followed by a superb spring in 2021, when he again showed he was the best sprinter in cycling.

However a knee injury put him off the bike and jolted his momentum, with two stages wins in the 2022 Vuelta a España his best performances since.

Non-selection once again by Bora-hansgrohe for the Tour saw him decide to leave the team. Cue contact between himself and Barrett.

It wasn’t the first time their paths would cross. “I remember racing with Sam in Currow when he was 16 and when I was maybe 22 or 23,” Barrett says.

“It was actually quite funny. I was in the Rás in 2008. I was in a solo breakaway and got caught with maybe 7k to go. Sam actually won the sprint finish, and he didn’t realize he won because he still thought I was ahead in the breakaway alone. So he didn’t actually celebrate.”

“I remember Stephen was out front all day that day by himself,” he said then. “And I wasn’t sure if we’d caught him. So I didn’t put my hands up to celebrate for fear of looking like an eejit.”

Fifteen years after that success, fate would bring them back into each other’ orbit once more. Bennett was looking for a new team; Barrett and Ag2r were looking for a big signing.

“It was a story that started almost a year ago. I know his agent quite well,” Barrett says. “We started kind of playing with the idea of how it might be. Decathlon have a big goal to make a team more international so, as part of that project last year, they set up a new recruitment committee. I was part of that because I was actually one of the only people in the sport management who speak English.

“My main aim was to be able to talk to English speaking riders, English speaking agents. Sam became a possibility, a bit of a hidden hope. I met with his agent in Bilbao at the start of the France and we started discuss some ideas about how it would work.

“As the Tour went on we found out it could be a really good fit for him. I met Sam a few times after that, went to his house and met him and explained him the project. He’s been bitten by the bug.”

When Bennett’s signing was announced in December, he told Stickybottle about that connection.

“Stephen Barrett was a huge influence,” he said then. “I’m super excited to get to work with him. I started training with him in the last few weeks, and I’m already getting great impression from him. We see eye to eye on a lot of things.”

He’s fired up to land some big results, and Barrett is psyched to help him do so.

“For me, it’s the first time I’m going to coach a WorldTour Irish rider and that is exciting. It is a crazy thing that is in a French team, but for me it gives me more motivation to really do the max we can to make sure he can win some races.”

It’s nearly five and a half years since Aqua Blue Sport folded, and a lot of people’s lives have been changed. For Barrett, and Bennett, there is at least one positive from that premature ending.

“I was involved in it all,” Barrett says, referring to the negotiations, “and he has come here now. Sam has put a lot of trust the team, and put a lot of trust in me. So hopefully we can get him back to doing what we know he can do.”