Tactical error or weakness? Alberto Contador weighs in on BORA's tactics on stage 6 of the Vuelta a Espana

Ben O'Connor has hit hard in this Vuelta a España 2024. The Australian has already proven on more than one occasion that he is an elite climber and Grand Tour specialist. His big result was a fourth place in the overall classification of the 2021 Tour de France. In the sixth stage of the Grand Tour of the year, the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider put 6:32 into the group of favorites and took the leader's red jersey with a 4:51 lead over Primoz Roglic, his main pursuer.

After the race, Alberto Contador gave his opinion on Eurosport about what he had seen. The man from Pinto highlighted that Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe could have shown difficulties while Enric Mas' Movistar Team was the one that pulled the hardest to try to hunt down the 28-year-old cyclist.

"Concern at Red Bull - BORA. We saw the car they were saying it broke all our plans, we didn't expect it to be able to hold on like that," he said. The team had Florian Lipowitz in the breakaway and was reluctant to pull hard so as to benefit their rider - who in all fairness, climbed to fourth place in the GC and is now also a dangerous card for the upcoming weeks. But they were not expecting O'Connor to race as strongly as he did and build such a massive gap.

"They were calculating 3 minutes. It also strikes me that you are thinking that you can get more or less with three minutes but Movistar is pulling... What happens? What's going on, that Red Bull - BORA was going to the limit? Were they already at the limit with what's left of the Vuelta?" he questions. Aleksandr Vlasov and Daniel Martínez were not used in the stage, and stayed out of the wind saving themselves for future stages, definitely providing an argument that the German team still had more they could do to thin down the gap.

"Of course we have a very, very attractive Vuelta, today's was impressive. If you ride like Ben O'Connor did today it's because you're in great shape and they're going to have to sweat. They're going to have to sweat but on the other hand that's also going to translate into a show for us because they're going to have to attack," 'El Pistolero' concluded.