Barely a couple of minutes after losing a sprint by millimetres to Fabio Jakobsen (Deceuninck-QuickStep), Sam Bennett (Bora-Hansgrohe) stopped as he pedalled past a TV screen at the finish to confirm what he feared the result would be. `Second,` Bennett said as much to himself as a small group of journalists, in what he later revealed was one of the narrowest defeats he had suffered in his career to date. Victorious on stage 3 by several bike lengths, 24 hours later, with a second-place finish, Bennett has gained the points jersey, but losing by so little meant it barely compensated. `This one hurts a lot,` he told Cyclingnews.ADVERTISEMENT The Irishman also revealed he was suffering from some underlying physical difficulties affecting his performance, to the point he said, `I have to figure it out. If I start climbing [like this] on the stages where I have to put the power down, I`m not going to survive this tour.` In terms of positioning in the sprint, Bennett said he had made some mistakes and ended up paying the price. `I couldn`t get there. I was starting to get overly aggressive, sometimes when you`re forcing it, it ends up being worse and I was just forcing it.
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