Two weeks into the Vuelta a España and ten days into his leadership of the race, Ben O’Connor doesn’t appear to be unduly burdened by the red jersey on his back. True, Primož Roglič has steadily shrunk his advantage from almost five minutes to just over one, but O’Connor has never appeared fazed by the demands of his position.
The polemic over Decathlon-AG2R’s blocking manoeuvre on stage 11 was shrugged off amiably. “This was a good excuse to do it,” he smiled after deleting his Twitter account. His worst day, on the Puerto de Ancares, was absorbed swiftly. “I was pretty cooked,” he confessed afterwards. On Sunday, he delivered a defiant display at Cuitu Negru to defend his red jersey when many expected he would lose it. “I'll hold it for as long as I can,” he said at the finish.
It has, by any measure, been a tumultuous couple of weeks in O’Connor’s cycling life, but he kept the rigours of Vuelta leadership in perspective when he spoke with reporters in a video call on Monday’s rest day.
“I don’t think the fatigue is any different at this point,” O’Connor said. “To be honest, you’re mentally a lot more fried at the Tour de France than you are at the Vuelta a España or the Giro d’Italia. There are other elements in play in other Grand Tours that make you tired. Here, for example, it’s the relentless stage after stage where it’s always climbing. That isn’t so bad for me, but I do enjoy a nice easy sprint day every once in a while…”
O’Connor caught a break of a different kind at Cuitu Negru on Sunday afternoon, where he lost 38 seconds to Roglič on the final climb only to be handed back more than half of that concession after the stage. The commissaires gave Roglič a 20-second penalty for drafting behind his Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team car as he chased back on after a bike change, meaning that O’Connor carries a lead of 1:03 over his closest rival into the final week.
“Well, I didn’t lose another 20 seconds, pretty much,” O’Connor said on Monday. “I guess the penalty was dealt out as they saw fit. I didn’t even know he’d changed bikes, to be fair, I didn’t look around or know. A 20-second advantage back to me is handy, that’s for sure, but you can guarantee tomorrow he’s going to go all in and try to get that time back.”
Lagos de Covadonga
The Vuelta resumes in Asturias on Tuesday with one of the most demanding stages of the entire race. Lagos de Covadonga is the Vuelta’s most sacred site, and it’s also been fertile terrain for Roglič, who seized the red jersey from Odd Christian Eiking in the third week of the race in 2021. There are other summit finishes to follow at Moncalvillo and Picón Blanco, but Lagos de Covadonga might be the toughest test of O’Connor’s mettle.
“I think what I need to do is be at my absolute best tomorrow. That’s one of the main ones,” O’Connor said when asked what he needed to do to win this Vuelta. “Saturday [to Picón Blanco] is a stage that suits me more so, maybe the most out of the whole race. But tomorrow is a very important day to be good.
“It’s a pretty hard day, but to be honest I haven’t really thought about how it’s going to play out. I’m just thinking about how we’re going to approach the race and that’s kind of about it to be honest.”
It remains to be seen what supporting cast O’Connor will have by his side in Tuesday’s finale after Felix Gall’s unexpected travails on Sunday. The Austrian, who was apparently given the freedom not to wait for O’Connor on the Ancares two days previously, dropped from 8th to 21st overall after coming in more than 25 minutes down at Cuitu Negru. “He didn’t have good legs, simply,” said directeur sportif Cyril Dessel.
O’Connor, for his part, limited his losses well at Cuitu Negru, particularly given how he had struggled 48 hours earlier. “I was just cooked at that moment,” he explained of his comments after his travails at Puerto de Ancares. “But if you’re properly cooked, then you explode. Friday was a little bit rough, it definitely could have been better. But it wasn’t that I was saying I was absolutely fried and had to parachute out.”
Cuitu Negru augured well for his powers of recovery. And while O’Connor repeated on Monday that his overriding target for this Vuelta is simply a podium finish in Madrid, his disappointment at losing ground to Roglič and Enric Mas in the final kilometres of stage 15 Negru told another story. He’s not ready to exit the stage just yet.
“The time loss always hurts, and I was a bit annoyed with that,” O’Connor said. “But in the end, it’s special to have this jersey.”
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