Tour de France | O'Connor, Groenwegen and Plapp lead Team Jayco's 'all-terrain' assault

Team Jayco AlUla have been the first of many teams to announce their Tour de France lineup this Monday and they come with high ambitions and a priority in the stage wins. The Australian team has plenty cards to play and its expected leaders at the start.

“We’re really looking forward to getting on the road at the Tour de France with Dylan Groenewegen for the sprints and we’ve got Ben O’Connor for GC," team DS Matthew Hayman said in an issued press release. "We’ll have the national time trial champion and road race champion, Luke Plapp and Luke Durbridge, as Australians in the team, along with Ben, who is the first Australian GC leader for the team.

"The opening stage is a sprint stage and for a sprinter to be able to take the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, I’m sure that excites Dylan, and it would be a pretty crowning moment to take a win and the yellow jersey."

Ben O'Connor has been having a complicated season but he comes in with overall classification ambitions nonetheless. Although he has finished the recent Tour de Suisse in seventh place, he did not show his best level and ahead of him were several riders that won't ride for the GC at the Tour and so he is in need of taking a step up.

When it comes to the sprints the team is backing up Dylan Groenewegen, recently third at the Dutch national championships, with Luka Mezgec and Elmar Reinders backing him up. Luke Durbridge will both be helping with leadouts and positioning O'Connor.

After a double victory in the national championships Mauro Schmid has earned his spot in the lineup; He and Luke Plapp will have specific stage-hunting ambitions mostly in the hilly days whilst Eddie Dunbar could both be aiming for stage wins in the mountains or potentially even going for the overall classification as well if O'Connor's doesn't go as planned.

“We have a really versatile team and I’ve performed well in Grand Tours in the past so I’ll do everything I can to get back to the top five, which I’ve been able to finish in at the Giro d’Italia, Vuelta a España, and Tour de France," Ben O'Connor added. "We also have Dylan to go for the sprint stages, we pretty much have all kinds of stages covered. It’s always an exciting time, it’s the biggest race, and biggest stress, but it’s also the biggest reward".

“The route is a race of two halves. You have northern France with some extremely punchy stages and then pretty much, from stage 10 onwards, all of climbs are 30 minutes to one hour long. There are some really big cols and passes, so I think that’s where I will be enjoying the race a lot more. They’re the kind of mountain stages I really prefer. For me, it’ll be about getting through the first half and then executing in the second half.”

Team Jayco AlUla for Tour de France:
Ben O'Connor
Luke Plapp
Mauro Schmid
Dylan Groenewegen
Eddie Dunbar
Luke Durbridge
Luka Mezgec
Elmar Reinders