Sam Bennett won his sixth race of a still young cycling season when he surged to victory in the first stage of the Tour of the Algarve at Portimao.

The 30-year-old from Carrick-on-Suir survived a chaotic finale with crashes and splits in the bunch to beat Danny van Poppel in what was a slow motion sprint to the line as the finishing straight climbed gradually all the way through the last kilometre.

“It was hard going,” admitted the Deceuninck-QuickStep rider afterwards, “but Davide Ballerini and Michael Morkov did great work for me and got me in position to win. I wasn’t sure if the legs would be there, because I haven’t done much hard training of late, but the sprint was strong and I won and that’s great.”

Bennett now has the leaders’ jersey too, but the next stage is a mountainous one and he will expect to fall back in the overall standings.

However this is an excellent start for Bennett on a long, slow build-up to the Tour de France which starts at the end of June. Sam has opted to skip this year’s Giro d’Italia, which gets underway in Turin on Saturday, in the hope of enjoying similar success to last year’s Tour when he won the Green Jersey and two stages.