Sam Bennett used the first sprint opportunity at the Italian stage race Tirreno-Adriatico to score a top result for his team. The 24-years old Irish sprinted to 3rd place, just beaten by Jens Debusschere (Lotto-Soudal) and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo).

Bennett’s lead-out rider Zak Dempster completed the successful day by sprinting himself to the 9th place. The stage was dictated by a break-away group of 7 riders – two of them of BORA – ARGON 18: Cristiano Salerno and Patrick Konrad. Konrad won both intermediate sprints and he also gained some important points in the KOM ranking by climbing to the third place in both mountain classifications of the day.

All in all there will be a lot of good things to bring to the next couple of stages for the German team. Good experiences and showing their strength will bring good mood to the team.

“We are very satisfied. The team prepared the entire stage for Sam. They did a top job and given the sprint competition, Sam’s third place is a superb result. Of course, we always want to win but that wasn’t possible today. Due to the crash within the last 100 meters, Sam had to disrupt his sprint when he avoided crashing. He still has reserves left and he is confident to go for more. That makes us optimistic”, comments BORA – ARGON 18 Sport Director Enrico Poitschke on the good result to the Bora website.

“Today, Cristiano and Patrick had the task to be in the group of the day. For sure it wasn’t a disadvantage that both made it in the end. We tried with Patrick to score some points for the KOM jersey. That worked and now he has the first points in his pocket. We still have some stages to go and maybe we have the chance to fight for the KOM jersey at the end of the race. Bartosz [Huzarski] and Björn [Thurau] were involved in a crash with 10 kilometers to go. That affected our sprint lead-out but the most important thing is that both riders are OK and nothing serious happened”, Poitschke continues.

The third day of the race of the two seas will favor the sprinters who can climb as well. The stage goes from Cascina to Arezzo over 203 kilometers. Two mountain classifications must be completed on the first 100 kilometers. The finishing lap includes a tough climb with an incline of up to 11%.