Class is permanent: Why Sam Bennett's Vuelta victories show Bora Hansgrohe should have taken him to Le Tour

“Form is temporary, class is permanent” is one of the oldest and most established maxims in sport. It serves as a call to assess an individual on who they have been over the entirety of their career, and not allow that judgement to be clouded by short term ebbs and flows. It is most often uttered in connection to supposed games of “skill” such as football and cricket (believed to be its earliest sporting association.) This weekend Sam Bennett reminded audiences around the world that it is no less applicable to cycling.

He is not the first sprinter to do so. Mark Cavendish, a rider who has had more comebacks than Lazarus, springs to mind even more readily. Ad Perhaps it’s because there’s always someone younger, and cheaper.

Perhaps it’s because the “skill” of sprinters, their abilities to manipulate their machines into winning positions, is undervalued compared to more measurable metrics like VO2 max. Vuelta a España‘That’s what you want’ – Lloyd says quiet start means ‘spectacle’ more likely later in La Vuelta29 MINUTES AGO Bennett’s two Vuelta wins this weekend, the first of which came 699 days after his last Grand Tour success, have not been quite as eye-opening/surprising as the four Tour victories the Manxman claimed last year. They ought, however, to serve as a similar kind of call to arms to teams to reconsider how they evaluate two-wheeled talent.

Just as Cavendish left plenty of teams wondering “what if?,” when it comes to Bennett, Bora-Hansgrohe ought to be at least a little rueful of their decision to leave him out of their Tour de France line-up. Before we continue, a qualification: La Vuelta is not the Le Tour. A rider who is able to take victories in the former, even two in a row, is not necessarily able to