Sam Bennett continued his good start with NetApp-Endura when he sprinted to 3rd against some high-level competition in the final stage of the Tour of Oman. The podium result comes after several strong showings in the Tour of Oman and makes up for yesterday's bad luck when a mechanical cost Leopold König a likely overall top 10 finish.

As expected, the sprinters used the final stage of this year’s Tour of Oman to their advantage. After riding 147 kilometers from As Sifah to Matrah, Andre Greipel (Lotto Belisol) sprinted to his third stage win. Nacer Bouhanni (FDJ) and Sam Bennett of Team NetApp – Endura completed the podium.   Chris Froome (Sky) topped the overall classification after winning yesterday’s queen stage. Leopold König finished 17th with a deficit of 2:15 minutes.

Today’s undulating profile gave breakaway riders an opportunity, which meant that there were lots of attacks and lots of groups. After a hectic, fast start, the sprinter teams reunited the field in the final stretch, forcing the race to be decided in a mass sprint.

“The guys did a great job minding me in the stage," Bennett said. "Bartosz [Huzarski] got me over the main climb of the day in the second group. The rest of the guys helped in the final 15km to get me up to the front. Then Zak [Dempster] again did a fantastic job bringing me in a good position inside 500m. It’s great to have a wheel like that, that you can trust. I would have liked to have gone just before 200m but the opportunity didn't come until 175-150m so it was never going to be possible to make that ground up."

“We held back for the entire stage to completely focus on the final stretch for Sam," sports director Enrico Poitscke said. "The entire team prepared the sprint very well. We can be very satisfied with a third place finish given the line-up in this race. It is a redeeming result given our bad luck yesterday.

“I’m very satisfied with our team’s performance. Yesterday Leo had some bad luck, otherwise we certainly would have had a Top10 finish. That was our goal. We wanted to get Sam or Zak on the podium – and we did that today. Each day we noticed that we were getting very close.This means that we are in good shape and can be optimistic about our upcoming races."