After a Paris-Nice the place Ben O’Connor’s and Jayco-AIUI’s promising early efficiency spiralled into a way more disappointing finale, the Australian is again on the Volta a Catalunya, a race the place he is taken some prime outcomes prior to now and the place he is decided to set issues again heading in the right direction as soon as once more.
Second within the Paris-Nice staff time trial for Jayco-AIUIa was a massively encouraging second for O’Connor and his staff, pushing them into fourth total and inside putting distance of the lead. However, O’Connor’s GC bid subsequently collapsed utterly, with him dropping a few minutes on the hilly stage 4 that was partly neutralised due to poor climate and much more within the echelon stage 48 hours later.
O’Connor’s frustration and anger at how badly issues had gone was seen, and really audible on a Youtube video of him storming onto the Jayco-AIUIa bus after one Paris-Nice stage defeat, a cry of ‘fuck’ ringing by means of the air as he did so.
But if O’Connor had the sense of a missed alternative in France which ended with a 14th place total in Nice, it is solely strengthened his motivation to place issues again on monitor in Catalunya the place the terrain is way more in his favour.
“I’m feeling good, I really feel like hopefully there is usually a little bit of progress since Paris-Nice, it is a race I’ve all the time loved and it is in all probability the primary true mountain stage race that you just do, and the following one is not actually til the Dauphiné or Suisse,” O’Connor informed Cyclingnews simply earlier than the Volta begin on stage 1. “So it is one of many fortunate stage races that fits me completely.
“My targets are simply to be good once more, I had a little bit of a tough Paris-Nice. I made a few errors, I used to be fairly sick after Valencia like quite a lot of the boys generally within the peloton and I used to be a bit removed from the place I needs to be.
“So hopefully I’ve come previous that and I needs to be good right here. Hopefully.”
O’Connor made no secret that he want to win once more in La Molina, the stage 3 summit end that additionally enabled him to assert the general lead for a single day, his first at WorldTour degree. But he warned that La Volta is a race the place there isn’t any down time, and the place even the slightest of errors can carry a excessive value in consequence.
“This is a tour the place you must focus actually exhausting on on daily basis,” O’Connor stated earlier than the stage 1 begin. “Today [Monday] is wet, tomorrow it’s going to be actually windy spherical Figueres: principally, it is limitless.
“Even stage 5 down within the flatlands spherical [the region of] Empordà, it may be windy as hell down there. So you must keep concentrated.”
Having been caught out on the flawed aspect of a break up when the entrance a part of the bunch shattered on the rain-soaked, technical descent to San Feliu de Guixols, O’Connor was of a number of favourites, together with 2021 Volta winner Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and his brother Simon Yates (Visma-Lease a Bike), who misplaced 15 seconds to the lead group of twenty-two riders, together with Primož Roglič (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe). But the person from Perth stays nicely contained in the GC battle.
O’Connor’s race programme for 2025 is progressively filling itself out, too, with the Ardennes Classics now pencilled in to precede his Tour de France preparation, he stated. It’s not clear if he’ll return to the Vuelta a España, the place he had a memorably profitable GC efficiency final yr, or do the Canadian World Cups.
“But proper now, a very powerful factor is I do nicely right here,” O’Connor concluded. “Catalunya has all the time been a objective of mine, so I wish to ensure I do nicely.”
