Mick Bennett

Sweetspot director, Mick Bennett, can look back on 2013 with pride. The Tour Series continued to bring wheel-to-wheel racing among Britain’s top professional teams to city centres up and down the land. More importantly, Britain’s national tour continued to go from strength to strength. The 2013 edition faced the not insignificant challenge of following the vastly successful race of 2012. With live television coverage, and Bradley Wiggins’ victory dominating the sports pages of every national newspaper, not to mention the millions who flocked to the roadside, it’s fair to say the tenth edition of the modern Tour of Britain lived up to the billing.

Bennett’s greatest success of 2013, however, is Sweetspot’s role in delivering the sporting component of RideLondon, a weekend of cycling that brought London and Surrey to a standstill as tens of thousands of cyclists claimed the capital for two-wheeled transport. As race director for the RideLondon-Surrey Classic, the professional road race that closed the weekend, Bennett secured the participation of Milan-San Remo winner, Gerald Ciolek (MTN-Qhebeka), and Tour de France green jersey champion, Peter Sagan (Cannondale Pro Cycling). The race, screened live on BBC One, was a gripping encounter, with the remnants of a day-long breakaway caught on the run back in to London.

Bennett is rarely lost for words and conversation at the Christmas dinner table is likely to flow more easily than with your monosyllabic teenaged nephew. You can bet Bennett has some interesting plans for 2014, when the Tour of Britain, which capitalised brilliantly on the success of the Olympic road race in 2012, will attempt to follow the start of the greatest of all races when the Grand Depart of the Tour de France takes place in Yorkshire.