It was always going to be a tall order for Ben O’Connor to better his 2024 season, a campaign that brought with it second places at the Vuelta a España and the World Championships, and a fourth place at the Giro d’Italia.
So when he crashed on stage one of the Tour de France – after an opening half of the season that didn’t yield any standout results – he would have been forgiven for resigning himself to the belief that 2025, his first year with Jayco AlUla after joining from Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, was set to the antidote to the highs of last year.
He’s won enough big races and featured high in enough general classifications that 2024 could never be classified as a fluke or as an outlier, but consistency is the metric that elite athletes judge themselves by, and O’Connor hasn’t backed up his level from last year.
But if there’s one thing the Australian can do masterfully well – among the best in the peloton – it’s win solo from the break and by a big margin. He did it at the 2021 Tour de France, winning by a monstrous five minutes to Tignes, and again at the 2024 Vuelta, winning by a similar margin that catapulted him into the race lead that he didn’t lose until stage 19.
And on stage 18 of this year’s Tour, he was back at it: triumphing on the Col de la Loze by almost two minutes, to finally achieve his first victory for his new team. The season will not, as feared, be a damp squib; and this Tour will not, as equally feared, end without glory.
“It’s a pretty cruel race,” O’Connor said of the Tour. “I’ve found myself on the deck in the first few days three times and not through my own fault. Stage one [this year] was absolutely not my fault; in Copenhagen [in 2022] it was the same thing; and then in 2021 with the Opi Omi sign crash. The first couple of days have not treated me well at all in this race.
“I also won in 2021 and was fourth overall, and I’ve almost won a few others times before, but getting it done today means a lot to me. I’m very proud of myself and very proud for the team.”
O’Connor, 29, went into the race targeting a high GC placing, but a win on the toughest stage of the race, he said, trumps a lower top-10 finish in the race. “If you leave finishing seventh or eighth but not having won a stage or being close, then I’d definitely say yes [winning a stage is better] because of what I’ve done in the past.
“You’ve set the standard for your best performance so getting your hand up in the air is for sure the most enjoyable thing. It’s only when you complete a GC and have done a perfect race yourself and are proud of every day, you’ve tapped it out, ticked the boxes, that it gives you a different kind of satisfaction. I’m so relieved to get it done today and have the win for Jayco AlUla here at the Tour de France.”
That last point is not generic spiel, either. O’Connor is genuinely elated to be winning for his home team. “I’ve been loving my time here at Jayco AlUla and it’s about time I finally got a big result on the board. Being an Aussie rider on an Aussie team, this one goes out to everyone on the team, all the boys and girls. Thank you very much.”
The victory on the Col de la Loze, one of the Tour’s favourite summit finishes in recent years, came courtesy of escapee O’Connor attacking in the valley road between the Col de la Madeleine and the bottom of the finishing climb. “Me and [Jayco DS] Mat Hayman in the car had a discussion on the descent of the Madeleine to figure out what to do and how to win from this situation,” he reflected.
“We had nothing to lose and if we were going to win we had to go from the bottom of the valley, hopefully with Matteo [Jorgenson of Visma-Lease a Bike], that was a key thing and that’s what happened. And then to the top of Col de la Loze it was a pretty straightforward affair – you either had it or you didn’t.”
And once more, on the big mountain days, O’Connor had it.
