{"id":87877,"date":"2020-01-08T13:00:21","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T18:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/?p=87877"},"modified":"2020-01-08T10:17:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T15:17:22","slug":"sam-bennett-to-lead-deceuninck-quick-step-at-tour-down-under","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/2020\/01\/08\/sam-bennett-to-lead-deceuninck-quick-step-at-tour-down-under\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Bennett to lead Deceuninck \u2013 Quick-Step at Tour Down Under"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 22nd edition of the Tour Down Under will be the first race of the year for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.deceuninck-quickstep.com\/en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deceuninck \u2013 Quick-Step<\/a> team, who\u2019ll travel to the Southern Hemisphere with a versatile seven-man squad featuring Irish Champion Sam Bennett, who is set to make his debut for the team whose supporter he has been long before turning pro.<\/p>\n<p>The 29-year-old will look to be in the spotlight, especially as \u2013 on paper, at least \u2013 three of the six stages should come down to a bunch sprint. Trusted lead-out man Shane Archbold, Iljo Keisse and Danish Champion Michael M\u00f8rk\u00f8v will form a solid and experienced train for Bennett, with Jo\u00e3o Almeida, Mattia Cattaneo and Dries Devenyns \u2013 twice a top 10 overall finisher at the Tour Down Under (2018, 2019) \u2013 rounding out the team for the race taking place between 21-26 January.<\/p>\n<p>For the first time in the history of the event, Adelaide won\u2019t feature as start or finish of a stage, but the race is still based around the capital of the South Australia state, which gets to host the traditional criterium on January 19th. The sprinters will have again their opportunities to shine, but the GC fight should be more intense this year, with the stage to Stirling and the one to Murray Bridge (where crosswinds are expected) promising to deliver plenty of action before the big showdown on Willunga Hill (3.6km, 7.1%).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are looking forward to starting the new season again at the Tour Down Under, where is always a pleasure to be present, as it\u2019s such a well-organised race with amazing fans. We go there with a strong team and a motivated Sam Bennett, who will try to get his first victory in the Deceuninck \u2013 Quick-Step jersey. He\u2019ll have experienced men around him, so we are confident he can achieve this goal. We can also think about getting a good GC result, but we\u2019ll take it day by day, see how things go and how our riders cope with the heat\u201d, said sports director Rik Van Slycke.<\/p>\n<p>Roster:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Jo\u00e3o Almeida (POR)<\/li>\n<li>Shane Archbold (NZL)<\/li>\n<li>Sam Bennett (IRL)<\/li>\n<li>Mattia Cattaneo (ITA)<\/li>\n<li>Dries Devenyns (BEL)<\/li>\n<li>Iljo Keisse (BEL)<\/li>\n<li>Michael M\u00f8rk\u00f8v (DEN)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The 22nd edition of the Tour Down Under will be the first race of the year for the Deceuninck \u2013 Quick-Step, who\u2019ll travel to the Southern Hemisphere with a versatile seven-man squad featuring Irish Champion Sam Bennett<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":335,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[81],"tags":[21168,966,5575,20154,16344,20153,20305,18912,8856,3159,20736,20746,20643,3464,21230,17890,20743,5872],"class_list":["post-87877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-road","tag-adelaide","tag-australia","tag-criterium","tag-cycle-racing","tag-cycling-2","tag-cyclists","tag-deceuninck","tag-deceuninck-quick-step","tag-dries-devenyns","tag-iljo-keisse","tag-joao-almeida","tag-mattia-cattaneo","tag-michael","tag-michael-morkov","tag-rik-van-slycke","tag-sam-bennett","tag-shane-archbold","tag-tour-down-under"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/335"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bikeworldnews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}