George Bennett

He came 25th in the time trial on stage 19 to improve his overall standing to 10th on general classification, the highest ever placing for a New Zealander in a grand tour.

Bennett said that the season "started off reasonable and just got better and better...It's pretty hard to go past tenth at the Vuelta on a results base. That was pretty special".

In the 265 kilometre mountainous race, Bennett finished in 18th place.

George Bennett (born 7 April 1990) is a New Zealand professional road racing cyclist, who currently rides for UCI ProTeam.

Bennett was born in Nelson in 1990, where he was educated at Waimea College.

He originally took up cycle racing as a mountain biker, moving to Switzerland in 2009 to pursue his amateur career.

He said of it "I came here for a lot more than that. But that's all I could do in the end. I'll take it and it's better than 11th. At the start of the Giro I wouldn't have signed up for it but some things were out of my control and maybe I got the build up wrong as I was a bit too good too soon."

In August, he rode the Tour de Pologne, coming third on stage four and seventh on stage six to finish in fourth place on general classification, 24 seconds behind the winner Michal Kwiatkowski.

George Bennett competed at the World Road Cycling Championships at Innsbrook in Austria.

Bennett turned professional in 2012.

In 2013, George Bennett nearly won the New Zealand road cycling championships.

The 183.7 kilometre race in Christchurch had 10 climbs up the steep Dyers Pass road and Bennett was leading by 45 seconds over Hayden Roulston with the final flat 12 kilometres to go.

Roulston was able to chase down Bennett and pass him on the line.

Bennett commented that "I had everybody on the hill, but 21km solo [on the flat], when you're like me on a really windy day like this, it's just too far".

He competed with the squad for two seasons before moving to in 2014.

In October 2014, it was announced that he would join for the 2015 season.

On stage 14, Bennett made the breakaway and came 4th in the mountainous stage to Aubisque 31 seconds behind the stage winner Robert Gesink.

In May 2015, he was barred from starting the Giro d'Italia due to low cortisol levels (later discovered to have been caused by illness), as per Mouvement pour un cyclisme crédible (MPCC) rules.

He was not replaced by his team.

He represented New Zealand at the 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics.

George Bennett was named in the start list for the 2016 Tour de France and finished in 53rd place.

His most impressive performance in the Tour de France was finishing seventh on stage nine at Andorre Arcalis, judged by some as the toughest stage that year.

He commented that "You are there in front of millions of people and it is some kind of dream. Especially that first stage, stage 9 where I was seventh. You start attacking them 30km from the line and think you are going to maybe get a result or something. It is good for growing and good for learning but I wouldn’t do that again. I really did enjoy it. I definitely felt the pressure, though, not personally, but you could sense a different atmosphere at the Tour. You could feel that people were a lot more stressed and things like that. I didn’t take any of that stress on because I was there as last minute call up and everything I did was a bonus really."

George Bennett competed in the Men's individual road race at the 2016 Summer Olympics and came 33rd; he described the race as "absolutely" the toughest in his career, and 79 riders did not finish.

After the Olympics, He was selected to ride in the 2016 Vuelta a España as a support rider for Steven Kruijswijk.

When Kruijswijk withdrew, Bennett became the team leader.

Bennett also entered the Tour de France, and finished 7th on Stage 9, but retired midway through stage 16 when he came down with gastroenteritis.

He returned to Girona to recover.

He was the winner of the 2017 Tour of California, the 2020 Gran Piemonte and the 2021 New Zealand road cycling championships.

George Bennett was forced off the bike after contracting glandular fever, and this meant that he missed the 2017 New Zealand National road race championships and the Tour Down Under.

In 2017, George Bennett became the first New Zealander to win the general classification at a UCI World Tour cycling event, when he won the Tour of California.

After making the breakaway, he came second in the hilly stage 2.

On the uphill finish, Bennett got away with Rafal Majka and finished two seconds down on the stage.

He said of the stage, "We all worked together well. We had the same ambitions...None of us can beat [Andrew] Talansky in a time trial so we wanted to put space between us."

In stage 5 where the stage finished at the top of Mt Baldy, Bennett came third, two seconds behind Andrew Talansky and Rafal Majka, leaving him in second place over all.

The individual time trial (stage 6) became the stage that would decide the Tour of California Bennett, finished fourth in the 24 km time trial which put him into the race lead with a 35-second gap back to Rafal Majka.

Bennett said "I was riding and I didn’t hear much over the radio, then just about halfway my director suddenly lit up and just got super excited, yelling in my ear and I knew that something was happening. It wasn’t really until a couple of K to go that I really stepped into it. I crossed the line and knew I had a good time. I was like third or fourth or something. I was waiting for the clock to tick down and it was a pretty nervous few minutes."

With good early season form (4th New Zealand National road race championship, 11th Santos Tour Down Under, 9th Tirreno-Adriatico, 6th Volta Ciclista a Catalunya) George Bennett achieved his highest GC result in a Grand Tour when he came in eighth place overall in the 2018 Giro d'Italia.

Bennett was disappointed with the result, having hoped for a higher place.

He came second in the 2020 Il Lombardia.