Patxi Vila (@PatxiVila), director del @RBH_ProCycling: "Lo que ha hecho O'Connor ha sido increíble. Pocas veces he visto algo así" #LaVuelta24 #VueltaRTVE22A
"We have to give all the credit to Ben O'Connor" - BORA DS admits failure in tactics which have led to a difficult battle at Vuelta a Espana
CyclingFriday, 23 August 2024 at 11:15
Stage 6 of the Vuelta a España 2024 caused a 180-degree turn in the established script of the race when Ben O'Connor managed to take the red jersey with a victory from the breakaway that also allowed him to pull almost 5 minutes ahead of Primoz Roglic in the general classification.
The gap, if he were a breakaway man, wouldn't be a concern. But the Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale rider is a rider with a lot of experience in the GC battles, and his 4th places in the Tour de France 2022 and Giro d'Italia 2024 are proof of that. For this reason, the strategy adopted by Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe allowing O'Connor to take so many minutes was not clear to everyone, despite the presence of Florian Lipowitz in the same breakaway.
Although the consensus regarding the strategy failure is general, Patxi Vila, director of the German team, tried to justify the action (or rather inaction) of Red Bull - BORA during the final stretch of the stage. In words for TVE, he explained: "What O'Connor did was incredible. I've rarely seen anything like that," Vila began.
"Then when you see those 5 minutes you say 'well, Movistar Team has started to pull, we have also pulled and you have him 3 minutes away, okay'. But the truth is that it was incredible. The last climb we could see he was coming and we didn't take time off him. In the end we found ourselves with one of those performances of someone you don't expect and it catches you by surprise", he explained.
Then, for Eurosport, he continued with his statements trying to justify what happened: "It has been a hard day, no, very hard. The start was incredible and then the first climb had a lot of movements. We got 'Lipo' (Florian Lipowitz, ed.) in front. We thought he was very close to O'Connor in the general classification and he couldn't hold him off".
"Five minutes is not short, but there's still a lot of Vuelta left and we're going to keep fighting. We have to give all the credit to Ben O'Connor. I thought at the last minute he was going to take a knee and we were going to come in with 3 minutes or so. The breakaway was a breakaway of strength. It was done at a time when we were all giving up, and there was a lot of courage there," he said.
It seems, at least, surprising that a rider like Ben O'Connor, according to Patxi Vila, in Red Bull - BORA did not expect that he could make a performance like yesterday. As already mentioned, the 4th place in the Tour de France two years ago and in the Giro d'Italia this season, you don't have to go very far to know about the Australian's talent, show that the Decathlon rider is a very experienced stage-racer and also has very strong support in this race including Felix Gall who also sits in the Top10.
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