The first, of course, was his victory at the Tour of California last year, and for a while it looked like Bennett was a chance at pushing for an unexpected shot at Polish glory as well.
With 3.3 kilometres to go on a hilly stage, Bennett launched off a train of his remaining LottoNL-Jumbo teammates, Enrico Battaglin and Floris De Tier.
He was swiftly caught, but went again on the final climb, which averaged a 6.5 per cent gradient. Team Sky's Sergio Luiz Henao was battling to control the gap for teammate and race leader Michal Kwiatkowski, and although he briefly negated the threat, Bennett had more juice left in the tank, escaping for a third time and taking a five second gap over top of the climb.
His hopes of a first individual stage win as a professional rider came up short, as attacks from behind saw him reigned in with a kilometre to go, at which point Preidler counter-attacked and snuck away from what was left of a group decimated by Bennett's attacks to take his debut World Tour stage win.
Bennett recovered his energy to finish within the nine riders all crossing the line with the same time as Preidler, with Kwiatkowski finishing in third to extend his overall lead to 16 seconds over defending champion Dylan Teuns.
Bennett remains in third overall, 24 seconds behind, and one second ahead of Emanuel Buchmann.
A similar finish awaits the riders in the Tour's final stage tomorrow, and Bennett looks a strong possibility for one final trip to the podium.
Niall Anderson watched the race on a Polish stream and is now fluent in the language. (On jest zdecydowanie przegrany)
