Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale management have confirmed that there is no current plan for Ben O’Connor to race the Tour de France this year after he finished an impressive fourth overall at the Giro d'Italia, with lead sports director Julian Jurdie saying the Australian was “not on the long list right now” for July.
Speaking in February, O’Connor made it clear that the Giro d’Italia would be his top Grand Tour priority this year. Despite some illness in he third week, he finished fourth overall in Rome, while Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale also won two mountain stage wins with Valentin Paret-Peintre and Andrea Vendrame and the teams classification.
"In my eyes, fourth in the Giro is very, very good. And in all honesty, when you are fourth overall after three weeks, it means you deserve to be fourth," Jurdie told French website cyclismactu.net, talking the West Australian.
"He had a mechanical problems, no crashes either, so there are no regrets. Ben did his race, tried to keep up with the best, but he got a little stuck at times."
The Decathlon team for the Tour de France will be built Austrian Félix Gall, with the aim of repeating his top ten overall from 2023, Jurdie said along with hopefully a repeat of his stage win from last year, as well. Sprinter Sam Bennett is also expected to target the sprint stages.
"There is currently a group of twelve riders and they all know that they are on this list," Jurdie said.
"There is still time to refine the selection. Ben O'Connor? Currently, he is not one of the twelve riders who appear in this preselection.
"It is now up to us, the technical staff, to make decisions, and we are in regular meetings to develop the eight riders for the Tour of France. We have made progress on certain points, but we are still looking for benchmarks, particularly in the mountains, hence the importance of the Dauphiné and the Tour de Suisse."
Jurdie also discussed the team’s impressive first half of the 2024 season, which has seen the team claim 23 wins so far, more than double its total of nine for 2023 and 11 for 2022.
He also agree with fellow French sports director Marc Madiot, speaking in another interview for the same website, that Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) is the odds-on favourite for the upcoming Tour de France.
“To see the team ranked number 2 in the UCI classification and with 23 victories on June 1 is very exceptional,” Jurdie told cyclismact.net.
“We have to make the most of that but keep our feet on the ground. We’ve had good, consistent, performances all the way through the first part of the season.”
“Of course there’s a great deal of pride when you see that we’re running behind UAE Team Emirates, who are untouchable, but also ahead of some very big teams. It’s truly impressive.”
Asked to explain the reasons for this considerable year-on-year hike in success, Jurdie put it down to multiple causes, starting with boost of both their new title sponsor, Decathlon, for 2024 and their switching to Van Rysel bikes.
“We knew the data about the bikes was good, but it was only on the ground that we could confirm that, both at training camp and in the first races of the season,” Jurdie said, with the bike’s high-level aerodynamics a key factor.
On top of that, he said, in last year’s training camp in December, discussions had arisen about the need to take the team “out of its comfort zone and change things.”
There had also been significant changes in France Cyclisme, the management company that runs the team, including a new boss, Dominique Serieys and a restructured company.
Jurdie insisted that discussions to keep Valentin Paret-Peintre, a stage winner in the summit finish of Bocca della Selva (Cusano Mutri) in the Giro, were very well advanced, despite the Frenchman currently being linked to Soudal-QuickStep for 2025.
He added that the outright winner of the corsa rosa, Tadej Pogačar was the main GC man for July as well.
“It will be a more intense struggle than the fight for the maglia rosa, that’s for sure. I think Pogačar will handle his recovery time in June very well, he’ll be going in there as [favourite] number 1, and afterwards, there will be a stunning battle for yellow,” Jurdie predicted.
