It’s taken 13 days, but Ben O’Connor finally had to bow to the inevitable on Friday, and after a tenacious fight to retain the Vuelta a España lead, the Australian cracked on the Alto de Moncalvillo.
O’Connor’s exit from the Vuelta's top spot had long been expected, with some TV commentators already writing off his reign in red as soon as stage 9 through the Sierra Nevada.
But instead, the Australian has never thrown in the towel, and even on the ultra-difficult ascent to Lagos de Covadonga on Tuesday, he remained ahead of Primož Roglič, albeit by only five seconds.
That all went up in smoke when the Australian - along with the rest of the overall contenders - was unable to respond when Roglič, supported by his two Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe teammates Aleksandr Vlasov and Dani Martínez, blasted away with five kilometres to go on stage 19 on the Alto de Moncalvillo.
After Vlasov and Martínez had done their work to let Roglič solo to the finish, O’Connor entered into maximum damage limitation mode. But as Enric Mas (Movistar) took off on his own account, even staying with a group containing Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) proved too much.
By the summit and with his head shaking from side to side, O’Connor had lost nearly two minutes on Roglič, the biggest time gap of any since he claimed the red jersey on stage 6.
“I was a bit broken at the end there, I actually felt pretty good until about half way up and then just… [it’s] stage 19 I guess,” O’Connor told reporters. He had not been so surprised, he said, at the way Roglič and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe had delivered such a crushing display of superiority with their three-rider attack, but as he said, “I just didn’t expect myself to be so bad at the end.”
“I was a bit average, to be honest, but I guess that’s just the reality.”
Still in second overall, when it comes to the podium fight, his time loss of nearly a minute on Mas and 46 seconds on Carapaz means the Spaniard and Ecuadorian are snapping at his heels.
But O’Connor said that for now, at least, his thoughts were more about resting up after a super-hard Vuelta than how the rest of the race could play out. As he put it, “Right now, I’m thinking about Monday and having beers and sitting on the terrace.
“I tried today, but I didn’t really do my best work,” he concluded. “So it’ll come down to tomorrow [Saturday] and obviously we have Sunday as well. So there are still two very important days to come.”
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