Ben O'Connor will have a chance to bounce back as Jayco's GC leader at Volta a Catalunya
Cycling
Team Jayco AlUla is not having a great start to the 2025 season. Despite a number of star riders among its ranks, the Australian WT formation is yet to win its first race in Europe. Ideally, Volta a Catalunya will present them with an opportunity to turn this bleak statistic around.
Ben O'Connor - podium finisher at last year's Giro, Vuelta & World Championships - seems like a man for the job with three hard mountain stages ahead. Even the easier days would be a bitter pill to swallow for most sprinters - that's why Jayco doesn't bring any to Spain. Instead, they'll bet on the speed of Danish all-rounder Anders Foldager.
"Ben is coming into the race off the back of a tough Paris-Nice, he’s really motivated and we’re hoping he can take a step forward from last week," says sports director Steve Cummings in a team press release ahead of the race. "There’s also some good opportunities for Anders in the fast finishes and reduced group sprints."
"On the GC we will try and aim for the best result we can with Ben, stage three in particular will be a big test. The reduced sprints look good on paper for Anders. It’s a great chance for him, he hasn't got a win at WorldTour level yet, but this will be a good test for him to see how he stacks up against the fast guys at this level."
"It’s a hard race, but it suits him, and he’s motivated for sure, and hungry to get a big result and his first for the team. We’re all excited to help him achieve that goal and I can’t wait to get stuck in," concludes O'Connor's teammate Christopher Juul-Jensen.
Team Jayco AlUla lineup for 2025 Volta a Catalunya:
- Welay Berhe
- Koen Bouwman
- Alessandro De Marchi
- Ander Foldager
- Asbjørn Hellemose
- Christopher Juul-Jensen
- Ben O’Connor
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- bravissima!
maria2024202423-03-2025 - According to Tadej's Strava upload, he went up the Cipressa at an average speed of 37.6kph. Rocket ship! He did the 5.63km verified 'Cipressa' Strava segment in 8:59 minutes, which has a 4.3% average grade and total elevation gain of 229m. Naturally, he got the Strava KOM.Pogboom23-03-2025
- In Track and Field, there's Usain Bolt in the sprints and Kenya's Kipchoge in the marathon. Though Bolt can quite easily beat Kipchoge in the 100m dash, he probably won't even finish a marathon. Tadej won't beat Mathieu in a sprint, yet he wins the TDF while MVDP languishes in 50th place. Both are great champions in their respective fields, but my admiration goes to Tadej for trying.FredMan23-03-2025
- They went into the race as co-leaders!frieders323-03-2025
- He can win that sprint if he plays it right but leaving tha gap was ridiculous ! A spring after 6+ hours isn't a guarantee for MVDPfrieders323-03-2025
- The climbs are steeper on Flanders giving Pogi the advanatge as we saw before when he won!frieders323-03-2025
- VDP is best in a short sprint, so Pog was purposely leaving a gap in hopes that VDP wouldn't have enough to sprint for 310 meters at the end of 300 KM. Kwiatkowski did the same thing to Sagan at that same point and won because of it.acem8223-03-2025
- Ganna started winning the occasional end of season sprint a few years ago. It's been fun watching him change from a TT specialist into something more.RidesHills23-03-2025
- hey look, an insinuating question from 2 years ago! I mean, sure, announcers mentioned tail wind, but whatever. That wasn't going to matter today, not with the 2 best classics riders of the past many generations (you have to go back to the 70s to see two people dominate like this, and even Merckx and de Vlaeminck never managed to win 2 each in the same year, the way Pogacar and Van der Poel have done in the past 2 years).RidesHills23-03-2025
- I like my statistics: Pogacar and van der Poel have won 13 of the last 18 Monuments and are tied at 7 each (MvdP won his first long enough ago that it doesn't show the more recent utter domination.) Oh, and the last 2 road world championships. Oh, and one of them also won the last Tour and Giro, while the other won the CX and Gravel world championships. I mean, anyone reading this site knows all this, but it's worth being amazed by it all every now and then.RidesHills23-03-2025