When Ben O’Connor launched his attack on stage 6 of the Vuelta a España, he may have already committed to a new team but there was still plenty at stake as he trusted his instinct rather than the shouts from over the radio warning that this move was folly rather than inspired racing.
The Australian was about to leave Decathlon AG2R for Jayco-AlUla on good terms. He didn’t want to change that as he charged off in an ambitious break on his last race with the French squad but nor did he want to stop utilising a characteristic at the core of so much of his success.
“It's an aspect of cycling that I cannot lose, I can't lose that aggressivity to chase wins or to put myself out there in a risky situation,” O’Connor told Cyclingnews as he reflected on a superb 2024 season.
“In the Vuelta I had everything to lose. We went there as a team for a top five overall for me, and I put myself out there. If it went wrong, all the boys are going to be like, ‘What did you do?’ My directors are also shouting in the radio at one point, like, ‘don't continue with it, stop pulling, this is just not going to work’.”
“You put yourself on the line. If I did get caught, and then who knows, it gets really difficult again and I drop, or in two days time I drop in Granada [stage 9], it would always come back to me and that effort,” accepted O’Connor.
“I didn't want to ruin my time with the team by screwing it up. You had to take a huge leap of confidence in yourself at that moment and say, ‘Nah, I'm good. I'm good. It's gonna work out. It will work!’. And you have to be able to back that up.”
It did work of course, with the Australian taking the stage and the red leader’s jersey, plus the 4:51 gap he carved out on the overall to Primož Roglič.
That helped him hold onto the race lead until stage 18 and finish the 21 days of racing with the second spot on the overall podium in Madrid.
In his first Grand Tour with Decathlon AG2R in 2021, O'Connor had proven his podium potential with a fourth place in Paris after a similarly audacious move. His second place at the Vuelta a España meant he was finishing his last race with the French squad with the realisation of a Grand Tour podium dream.
The end of one era, a final celebration with the team as he signed off with a season that could hardly have gone better.
“I've really enjoyed the time with the team, and I think they've also really probably appreciated a very different way to have a leader within the team,” said O’Connor.
“It was a cool period of my career and now you turn the page, onto the next one.”
Right time, right place, right rider
The next one begins with Jayco-AlUla on January 1 as O'Connor was just the rider the Australian team was looking for as it contemplated its options for 2025 and beyond.
The team is developing number of GC riders - from Luke Plapp and Eddie Dunbar to Chris Harper – but Simon Yates' contracted end in 2024 and he opted to move on. A new Grand Tour team leader was needed.
“We had to have a back-up plan ready to go,” Matt White director of High Performance and Racing told Cyclingnews.
“So we were already looking around the market to see who was available and who would be a good fit for the team. Obviously, Ben's name came up to the top of our list.”
And that was even before the rider from Western Australia had the strongest season of his career, with that second place overall at the Vuelta a España transforming his Grand Tour potential into a reality.
Still that was just one entry among a long list of powerful results that ran right through from runner-up spots at the UAE Tour, the Tour of Alps and also the silver medal behind Tadej Pogačar at the World Championships road race.
In fact O'Connor didn’t once finish outside the top five overall in a stage race and that consistency helped lift O’Connor to fourth in the world rankings for 2024.
“His consistency is something that really attracted us to him and I still don't think he has reached his potential,” said White.
“Until this year we'd seen flashes of brilliance, obviously with the fourth place in the Tour de France and some other big results here and there, but this year he managed to put a really, really consistent year together.”
“Then the other thing as well is we've never had an Australian leader of the team in the General Classification, so that obviously is attractive to us as well,” said White of the squad which has managed to put a rider on a men's Grand Tour overall podium three times in its 13 seasons on the WorldTour.
The first rider was Colombian Esteban Chaves who came second at the 2016 Giro d’Italia plus third at the Vuelta that year while British rider Simon Yates delivered a first Grand Tour win for the men's program when he won the Vuelta in 2018.
"To be an Aussie GC guy going to the Tour with an Aussie team. I think that's an exciting thing for Aussie cycling, to be honest,” said O’Connor of his Tour de France plans for 2025.
Hitting the ground running
Having an Australian rider shooting for the biggest GC goals on an Australian-based team also matters just as much behind the scenes.
Communication can often be just that little bit easier in the mother-tongue, with nuances easier to grasp and reactions perhaps more easily understood when all involved are viewing the situation through a similar cultural lens. It’s certainly a factor that appealed for O’Connor – a rider who had the emotion in his reactions put under the microscope in the Netflix Unchained series on the 2023 Tour de France.
He may be stepping in as a leader at a new team in 2025, but while it has an extensive mix of nationalities, the DNA and feel of the squad is clearly Australian.
“I think just being with that Aussie group will be a lot easier mentally, to deal with things that you need to fix, in particular, you can express yourself, as you should be able to, and people probably understand,” O’Connor said.
He added that this applied equally for when things were going right as when they were going wrong but that it was also just as crucial in the general chit-chat as “creating more mateship” as he moved into the new team was one of the big things he was looking forward to.
A change, however, always brings new challenges and something the rider will have to get used to is lining up at the Tour de France in a team that has long tackled the French Grand Tour with dual ambitions.
2025 won’t be any different, with O’Connor to head a GC-focused group while another section of the team will be tailored to the needs of sprinter Dylan Groenewegen.
White, however, doesn’t see that as an issue given the expected scenario for the 2025 edition of the Tour de France.
No one's looking for Jayco-AlUla to control the Tour de France, are they?
“The focus for Ben is going to be the Tour de France but it doesn't matter what he does in the spring, the two favourites for the Tour de France are going to be [Jonas] Vingegaard and [Tadej] Pogačar. So no one's looking for Jayco-AlUla to control the Tour de France are they? So you can take a different team to finish third, fourth or fifth at the Tour de France than when you are trying to win it.”
If O’Connor’s display at the Road World Championships is anything to go by – he was part of the winning mixed relay team and then took second in the road race – there is no reason to think he shouldn’t adapt quickly to the new but in some some ways still familiar team. In fact it was soon after the shift to Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale in 2021 that he delivered fourth overall in his debut at the Tour de France.
It should be no surprise then that Jayco-AlUla are looking to the rider to quickly pick up on the momentum of 2024 in the year ahead.
Plans are in place for him to take up the GC reins straight away, with Mauro Schmid and Eddie Dunbar identified as among the key riders the team would like to have around O'Connor.
”We're definitely planning on hitting the ground running and I think Ben will slide straight into leadership here very well,” White said.
”I think we've got some good, good guys we can put around him immediately, and we'll try to sort of run a couple of those key riders around him quite regularly so by the time we do get to the Tour it will be with a bit of synergy there already.”
What’s more, it’s clear that while the plan may be for the rider to quickly find his comfort zone within the team, the aim will be to say true to his style of pushing way out of it on the road.
“He doesn't out climb Tadej or Jonas, most people in the world can't do that, so instead of playing a conservative game ‘follow, follow, follow’ he has a different tactic,” said White.
“He throws it out there, rides aggressively and looks for opportunities where a lot of other GC guys don't, which is a great talent to have and an exciting way to race.”
And, for O'Connor, one that has proven crucial to his success.
The rider now has stage wins across all the Grand Tours and a podium at one, an experience which has left the 29-year-old looking for more as he heads into a new phase of his cycling career.
“I need to win a WorldTour stage race, because I've missed that so far, and I just want to be on the podium of all Grand Tours in the end,” said O’Connor.
“When you're on the steps in Madrid, or whether it's Rome or Paris, it's a pretty special thing, because it’s not just for yourself too, it's the whole team, the whole atmosphere, everyone around you, that's got you that you to that point.
“That's very much a thing that needs to be done again, because it was a special moment and one that gives you a lot of pride.”
