At the Giro d’Italia, the line between courage and recklessness is always a faint one. Ben O’Connor only realised he had crossed it a shade under 4km from the summit of Oropa on stage 2, as he watched Tadej Pogačar’s rear wheel disappear steadily and inexorably from his view.
It was hard to tell which was the greater ordeal for O’Connor, the ascent of Oropa itself or the long drop to his team bus in Biella afterwards. On the way up the mountain, the Australian had gamely tried to resist Pogačar’s stage-winning onslaught. On the way back down after the stage, he was haunted by the realisation that his bravery had spilled across the border into folly.
“I wanted to try to follow Pogi. It was kind of a goal because I felt so good, so it was worth a try,” O’Connor said outside the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale bus afterwards. “But perhaps it was a touch too long, and I suffered the consequences for it later in the race.”
O’Connor had spoken before this Giro of his desire to go toe to toe with Pogačar, and he was as good as his word here. When Pogačar launched his ineluctable attack 4.4km from the finish, O’Connor was immediately on his wheel, daring to reach out and touch the flame while others watched at a wary distance.
Within a few hundred metres, the heat proved too much even for O’Connor, who had to release his grasp on Pogačar’s wheel. He slipped back to Geraint Thomas (Ineos Grenadiers), but still he persisted in pushing on the pace in a bid to limit the damage. Thomas, by contrast, was content to track O’Connor and, for now at least, to leave Pogačar to indulge in his own personal contest against history.
O’Connor’s strategy was more gallant, but Thomas’ was altogether more pragmatic. After the pair were caught by a group of chasers, O’Connor’s efforts began to tell, and he gradually slipped out the back. At the summit, he was 13th, a minute down on Pogačar. More relevantly, he was 33 seconds behind Thomas and Daniel Martínez (Bora-Hansgrohe).
A long, plaintive expletive echoed from the depths of the Decathlon AG2R bus after O’Connor had climbed aboard after the finish. His exasperation was all the more acute because he had lost time to Thomas et al on a day when he had appeared to be the strongest of the men chasing Pogačar at this Giro.
Losing time and moving on
After showering and changing, O’Connor emerged with a rueful smile. His frustration won’t have dissipated entirely in the space of half an hour, but the Subiaco native was already happy to own the error and start moving on from it.
The sanctuary at Oropa was constructed during the Counter-Reformation for pilgrims to perform penance as they climbed towards the chapel at the top. O’Connor, for his part, donned the sackcloth and ashes after he had freewheeled back down the mountain.
“The idea of every stage is to be fastest to the line, not the fastest to follow the great Pogi,” he confessed.
O’Connor first began to realise he might pay a heavy price for his efforts when Thomas refused his entreaties to come through and help the pursuit of Pogačar.
“It was just me on the front and we were kind of just going nowhere anyway waiting for the group to come from behind,” he said.
“It kind of all happened pretty fast. It was pretty average, to be honest, how I finished today’s stage, so I’m not very proud of it. I’m proud of how I tried to race, which was aggressive, but I’m just not proud not to have finished off properly.”
It could have been worse, of course. After losing contact with Thomas, Martinez et al, O’Connor still managed to keep his losses within manageable limits, even if he wasn’t quite ready to cling to that thought for consolation.
“You should never lose time like that, it’s just not good enough,” he said. “You have to set yourself to higher standards than losing time for nothing because you’re just not that intelligent. I made a bit of a mistake today. I’ve learned, hopefully, and I’ll try not to make that mistake again.”
In the overall standings, O’Connor is now 10th overall, already 1:45 behind Pogačar but still only 39 seconds off a podium spot. The annoyance at needlessly coughing up time to Thomas and Martinez was tempered by the realisation that there are still three more than 3,000km left to race between here and Rome.
“There’s a long way to go and there’s already boys who are well and truly out of that GC race,” O’Connor said. “I think on the stage to Livigno, there’ll be gaps of minutes between boys, so this might not be the biggest thing in the world. But at the start of the race, you never want to lose 30 seconds.”
