Ben O'Connor's Giro d'Italia GC aspirations took a serious but perhaps not decisive turn for the worse on Saturday when the Jayco-AlUla leader was amongst the first major contenders to crack on the final summit finish of stage 14 at Pila.
Just when race leader Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) was dropped, nine kilometres from the summit, O'Connor also found he could not handle the pace set down by Visma-Lease a Bike's top climbing domestique Sepp Kuss. In the space of a kilometre, like Eulálio, the Australian had already lost over a minute on the main GC group.
This was a full four kilometres before Kuss teammate, stage winner and new race leader Jonas Vingegaard had attacked, but O'Connor dug deep nonetheless and found hs own pace.
The Australian limited his losses to 2:55 by the summit, but he still dropped from fifth to eigth overall. He is now 5:22 down on Vingegaard, and 3:32 off the closest podium spot, Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) in third place.
O'Connor had a great ride on the Blockhaus, strongly defending his position on GC, before a more torrid time at Corno alle Scale. He also told Domestique he had been ill earlier in the race.
There were unconfirmed reports that O'Connor had crashed in the neutralised zone of stage 14 and if that had had any effect on his performance and he is famous for his capacity to turn things around in the third week. But it remains to be seen if he can regain momentum in the last and toughest part of the 2026 Giro d'Italia, and whether if so he'll now focus more on GC or switch towards stage wins.
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