“In the Vuelta I had everything to lose" - Ben O'Connor ready to take next step in 2025 after breakthrough season

2024 will no doubt go down in history as the year of Tadej Pogacar, but under any other circumstances, the performances of Ben O'Connor might have much more attention. With leadership of a new team ready and waiting for the Aussie in 2025, O'Connor is now poised to take the next step of his career.

The highlight of a season that also included a 4th on GC at the Giro d'Italia and World Championship silver medal, was undoubtedly O'Connor's performances at the Vuelta a Espana. In his final Grand Tour for the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team, O'Connor laid it all on the line with a breakaway raid on stage 6, holding the Red Jersey for 13 days before eventually finishing 2nd overall to Primoz Roglic.

“It's an aspect of cycling that I cannot lose, I can't lose that aggressivity to chase wins or to put myself out there in a risky situation,” O’Connor says in conversation with Cycling News of his Vuelta heroics, as a move to Team Jayco AlUla looms in 2025. “In the Vuelta I had everything to lose. We went there as a team for a top five overall for me, and I put myself out there. If it went wrong, all the boys are going to be like, ‘What did you do?’"

"My directors are also shouting in the radio at one point, like, ‘don't continue with it, stop pulling, this is just not going to work’,” he recalls. “You put yourself on the line. If I did get caught, and then who knows, it gets really difficult again and I drop, or in two days time I drop in Granada [stage 9], it would always come back to me and that effort. I didn't want to ruin my time with the team by screwing it up. You had to take a huge leap of confidence in yourself at that moment and say, ‘Nah, I'm good. I'm good. It's gonna work out. It will work!’. And you have to be able to back that up.”

As mentioned though, that turned out to be a parting gift for Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale as a return to Australia and leadership of Team Jayco AlUla coming calling for the 29-year-old. “I've really enjoyed the time with the team, and I think they've also really probably appreciated a very different way to have a leader within the team,” O’Connor reflects. “It was a cool period of my career and now you turn the page, onto the next one.”

"To be an Aussie GC guy going to the Tour with an Aussie team. I think that's an exciting thing for Aussie cycling, to be honest,” O’Connor adds, open on the Tour de France being his main goal for 2025. “I think just being with that Aussie group will be a lot easier mentally, to deal with things that you need to fix, in particular, you can express yourself, as you should be able to, and people probably understand."

“I need to win a World Tour stage race, because I've missed that so far, and I just want to be on the podium of all Grand Tours in the end,” O’Connor concludes. “When you're on the steps in Madrid, or whether it's Rome or Paris, it's a pretty special thing, because it’s not just for yourself too, it's the whole team, the whole atmosphere, everyone around you, that's got you that you to that point. That's very much a thing that needs to be done again, because it was a special moment and one that gives you a lot of pride.”