With a fourth place in the Tour de France in 2021 then a fourth place in the Giro d’Italia this May, it’s perhaps not so surprising that Ben O’Connor’s top priority for the Vuelta a España is not to repeat the same placing. Even if it means finishing further down the overall.
“I’m a bit sick of fourth, it’s kind of the worst place,” O’Connor said as he awaited the start of his third Vuelta a España and 10th Grand Tour of his career.
“You’re close but not close enough. I hope in three weeks time in Madrid I’ll have that big smile of finishing on the podium, feeling proud of myself and proud of what we’ve done with the team. Just like we have been feeling all season.”
Were he not able to finish on the Vuelta podium, as he put it, “I’d take fifth over fourth.”
O’Connor’s first race back from the Giro this May came with a late call-up for the Olympics Road Race, replacing the injured Luke Plapp and finishing 51st. If his Paris performance perhaps came too soon in his autumn buildup, a subsequent 11th place in the Clásica San Sebastian boded well for the Vuelta a España. And apart from his major GC goals this August, O'Connor said he is also looking to round off his Grand Tour stage wins ‘set’ with a victory in Spain.
“I enjoyed being at home,” the 28-year-old said. “I needed a break after a heavy start to the season. I’m pretty ready now to get into the second part.
“La Vuelta always has a bit of a different vibe. It’s gonna be a pretty fun race, there are always questions about whether the break can win or not, or will the GC guys take a chance to win stages."
"Hopefully I can go for a bit of both [breaks and GC]. A stage win would be great after the ones I got in the Tour and the Giro.”
O’Connor last raced the Giro-Vuelta combination in a single season back in 2019, taking 32nd and 25th, respectively, and a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then. Even in 2019, he did take a promising sixth on one of the toughest stages in Asturias, on the Alto de Acebo, won by Sepp Kuss as his first Grand Tour stage win.
“The great thing about the Vuelta is that it has a combination of super hard summit finishes and medium mountain stages. Equally, there can be 12 or 13 GC stages, where you can get time or lose time overall. So there are plenty of stages where you can be opportunistic,” O’Connor pointed out on Thursday,
The other big difference, certainly compared with the Giro d’Italia of 2024, is that the weather is expected to be a lot hotter, particularly in the south of Spain in the first week. Temperatures, already in the low to mid-30s Celsius in Lisbon, are set to rise to 37 degrees on Monday and in the Spanish regions of Extremadura and Andalucia, where the Vuelta returns on Tuesday, they are not likely to drop much lower.
“I’ve only ever had one bad day in the heat, back on the Ventoux in 2021. Generally, I don’t have any issues there,” O’Connor said. “We all prepare for the heat in our own ways, and although I won in Tignes [in the Tour de France in 2021] in the cold and rain, I’d have preferred it to have been warmer that day!”
The weather is one factor that O'Connor cannot control, another is the absence or presence of particular rivals. And in the case of the Vuelta, the lack of cycling's current top two GC Grand Tour names, Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), may create a more open race. But O’Connor’s point of view was, "it doesn’t change a lot”, as he pointed out on Thursday,
“You still have to be at the front, there may be more opportunities. To be honest, I couldn’t care less," he said.
With or without Vingegaard and Pogačar, O’Connor’s 2024 Vuelta ride, in any case, with have something of an end-of-an-era feel to it, as it will be his last for Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale prior to moving onto Jayco-AIUIa next season.
Given so much of his development as a GC rider has come with the French WorldTour team, a podium finish in Madrid would certainly bring the curtain down on the West Australian’s time there in a memorable fashion. Not to mention putting a stop to those annoying fourth places overall, too.
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