The sport of cycling has always provided great stories of personal and team accomplishment and another is being written on the stages of this year’s Tour de France.
From the thrills and spills of this most iconic of events, former AnPost/CRC and Vitus rider Sam Bennett is writing his name in the history of the race, becoming the first Irish cyclist to hold a jersey here since Sean Kelly was awarded the final green jersey in Paris way back in 1989. Today Sam will pull on the green jersey to take over where Vitus legend Sean Kelly left off and we couldn’t be prouder to have been involved in the success of both riders.
Like Sean, Sam has played a pivotal role in the evolution of our bikes to develop race-winning platforms and it was in 2013 when we saw a landmark year for Vitus in road racing. Via the Sean Kelly relationship, Vitus became the bike sponsor of the AnPost UCI Continental race team. Working with athletes to develop and improve our bikes is at the heart of Vitus, and one of the best weeks of our ‘new chapter’ was watching Sam Bennett out sprint a star-studded peloton in the 2013 Tour of Britain to take a stage win. The Vitus team had been working with the AnPost riders to increase the stiffness of the Vitesse frame to transfer the efforts of the extremely powerful Bennett to the road, all the effort was worthwhile.
Sam has vowed to fight all the way to Paris for the coveted green jersey and the entire Vitus team is behind him all the way. Be sure to catch next week’s blog when we talk with Sean Kelly and get his thoughts on Sam’s success and further discuss this year’s Tour de France.
From all at Vitus - You can do it Sam!