He who puts in the hardest yards, reaps the biggest rewards, goes the mantra. But sport, especially cycling, isn’t as linear as that: the hardest worker, the one who sacrifices more than anyone else, might be undone by illnesses, crashes and whatever other bad luck conspires against them. And the best legs don't always win: clever tactics, brave riding and a dose of good fortune can work in the favour of lesser-talented riders.
The 2024 version of Ben O’Connor is proof of that. Second in the Vuelta a España and World Championships and fourth at the Giro d’Italia, the Australian had his finest season yet, a year when the stars aligned more than they didn’t. “You can’t correlate it,” the 29-year-old says of performances and results. “Results are fickle. You can always do your best things and have it not work out. It [good results] can be about intelligence, being smart. Look at the Worlds: I wasn’t the second-strongest guy in the race, but I was smart and I came away with a silver medal. That’s just cycling.” He’s not going to pretend that he’s in the same conversation as the likes of Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard. “No, that’s out of reach, they’re too good,” he continues. “You can be close [to them] for sure on certain days but I’m not that physically talented.”
That said, O’Connor didn’t have the season he did through luck. Far from it. He is now definitely in the picture when it comes to discussing potential and probable podium finishers in one-week and three-week stage racing. This year, his last of four years with Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale before moving to Jayco Alula, “was a dream year. Something where you put together your best self every single race pretty much, and that was a proud thing,” he says. “I look back at it with a smile. It was kind of fantastic.”
At the start of the season, O’Connor reiterated that his dream was to finish in the top-three of a Grand Tour. He almost achieved that at the Giro, and then did at the Vuelta, after unexpectedly leading the race for 13 stages following a barnstorming and ballsy win in the first week. There are no regrets that Primož Roglič pipped him to the win, only pride at what he accomplished. “I think if you have a leader's jersey in any WorldTour race – Catalunya, Basque, Paris-Nice – you would keep that cherished jersey with you; it’s a moment, a cherished thing,” he says. “And then Grand Tours on top of that, I think being in that red jersey for two weeks was something different. It was a big thing. You’re in this travelling circus of the Tour of Spain and you’re leading the race. It was pretty honourable.”
The challenge now for O’Connor, Jayco’s new leader after Simon Yates’s departure to Visma-Lease a Bike, is making sure that 2024 doesn’t become an isolated success, the only year in which more things went right than went wrong. “Whether it is the best year of my life in cycling terms, I’m not really sure, but I can perform like this next year for sure. There’s no doubting that,” he states. “What makes me confident? For example, in the Giro I was sick as a dog the final week – I absolutely hated it, bar [the stage 20] to Grappa where I felt human again. So something like that you can look at it and say that was a big missed opportunity because I had it there to be on the podium but couldn’t do it.
“UAE Tour, I could also have won that, but [Lennert] Van Eetvelt did a great ride, and I also probably didn’t do the best one. So those two things you can see straight away: a podium in both Grand Tours and also winning a WorldTour stage race, that would have been even more fantastic.
“There were very few things that went wrong, but there were definitely a few things I know I can improve, so that’s always fun to rack your head around even though it was such a success. You think you should be over the moon, but you know there are always better performances and results there, or even better ways you could handle yourself in situations.”
Is there a temptation to target races where Pogačar, the world champion and reigning Giro d’Italia and Tour de France winner, won’t be? “You could go along that line… do the Giro and Vuelta every year If I wanted to, but then you avoid the Tour which is the pinnacle, and you want to be at the Tour because it is the pinnacle,” he says, confirming that he’ll be back for his fourth lap of France in the summer. “It’s the biggest race of the year and you want to be there. Sport is full of greats… you can’t win everything, you can’t avoid it because that’s professional sport, you just have to get on with it.”
O’Connor started the season by winning a mountainous one-day race in Murcia, Spain, and ended his campaign with second at the Worlds. “One-day racing is something my now former coach always believed I should be doing more of, it just never really aligned so much with what we were doing,” he continues. “With one-day racing, you really have to lay it on the line. With stage racing you can wait, be the best guy eventually over time, but one-day races you have to search for it, be somewhat aggressive at some point and that is quite a cool way to race. It’s something I should do more of. There is a kettle of fish there that is open and is ready to try and exploit.”
Being Jayco’s talisman is also deemed cool. “They’ve had [Esteban] Chaves, both Yates twins, but they’ve never had an Aussie GC guy,” he says. “You’re not going to blow your horn but you’re one of the better riders in Australian cycling so to be part of an Aussie team and to be a leader on that team is really cool.”
