Ben O'Connor transfer: Hit or miss? | Australian moves 'home' into Jayco AlUla but did he make an impression?

Ben O'Connor at age 29 is right around the peak of his career but the 2025 season was a mixed bag. The Australian rider spent several years with Dimension Data and the Decathlon AG2R team where he became a stage winner at the highest level and almost a Grand Tour winner, but moved away into Australia's own Team Jayco AlUla into 2025. Was it a hit or miss?

That is the first and perhaps most important question surrounding O'Connor. Certainly, it is something that had been in his mind for a while, and in Jayco's mind too, but in Decathlon the performance aspect was at its very best. Now, we can not neglect the human aspect, and on two occasions I was able to sit in front of O'Connor over the past 12 months and he was very honest about how he wanted to be in an Australian team, with compatriots in his team - an environment where he felt much better and more relaxed. That is important, and we can only hypothetically assumed that he would've done better in Decathlon, that is never something I can say with certainty.

But it is undeniable that O'Connor was built in Decathlon. An unlikely match, but there in his first year (2021) he rode the perfect Tour de France where he won a high mountain stage and then held his own to finish fourth in GC. Improving on that was always going to be very hard but he diversified his palmarès over 2022 and 2023 with podiums at the Dauphiné and wins during big stage-races and a few one-day races too. In 2024, he was one of the best in the world...

Second at UAE Tour; fifth at Tirreno-Adriatico; second in the Tour of the Alps; fourth at the Giro d'Italia... And then a Vuelta a España where he took advantage of his underdog role to take a massive breakaway win on week 1 and worry every single GC rider for two weeks in the race. He went on to finish second in the overall classification, only behind Primoz Roglic, and he could've won it if it weren't for a few bad days. However perhaps even more impressive was his second place in the Zurich World Championships where he only placed behind Tadej Pogacar. He couldn't have realistically aimed for a better season, really.

Came 2025, the results simply weren't there. All spring long there wasn't any particular performance to point out, the Tour de Suisse saw him ride to seventh with a modest field and at the Tour de France he didn't super high ambitions, he was content and relaxed. He set himself up for a Top10, which became unlikely as the race unfolded. He chased breakaway wins, failing on four occasions, but then... On the Col de la Loze stage, the queen stage of the Tour, he put out an O'Connor special, almost in typical fashion really.

The Australian rode to a solo win on the Tour's most difficult stage, getting caught from the early breakaway, attacking again before the final climb and then taking a solo win that also took him to the Top10. This looked certain, but then on the final 'competitive' day on stage 20, without mountains, he lost this Top10 to Jordan Jegat who was in the breakaway. Later in the season there weren't more results to show for, and so he ended a season that would've been a disaster if it weren't for that one day in the Alps.

Was it enough to save his season though? No. O'Connor's transfer was a miss, and there will be pressure for him to bounce back in 2026 specially as the team has lost a few other leaders including quality climbers.