We’re only four stages into the 100th Giro d’Italia and there’s already been a bit of argy-bargy that resulted in a rider being kicked out of the race. But Bora-Hansgrohe rider Sam Bennett has revealed that there was “nearly a riot” within his own team over, of all things, Panini stickers.

The 26-year-old Irish sprinter, a stage winner at Paris-Nice in March, made the revelation in the blog he’s writing on Independent.ie during the Italian Grand Tour.

Here’s what he said:

As it’s the 100th edition of the Giro, Panini have brought out a sticker album to celebrate the race – exactly like the Panini soccer albums I used to pester my mam to buy when I was a kid, there are packs containing stickers of each rider in the race to go into the album, which is pretty cool.

All of the riders were given an album in Sardinia and were told we’d get a pack of stickers each at the start of every stage.

This afternoon I walked in on my room-mate Lukas trying to sort his album out.

With his bed covered in stickers, he had them separated into teams, and then piles of riders that he had doubles of to swap.

I’ve only seen a few stickers floating around before today but I just found out that my Portuguese team-mate Jose Mendes got four boxes of them that he was supposed to pass out to us.

Instead, he tried to open them all in secret so that he could complete his sticker album first.

There was nearly a riot as nine grown men turned into eight-year-old boys and searched through the boxes for their own sticker.

At least I have a Sam Bennett sticker now. It might be the only one in my album, but I’m happy out.

As Panini sticker fans ourselves, we’re wondering if anyone out there has a Javier Moreno they’d like to swap for a Diego Rosa?