O'Connor turning from 'one-shot wonder' to Mr Consistency

Ben O'Connor during the AG2R Citröen training camp 2021
Ben O'Connor during the AG2R Citröen training camp 2021 (Image credit: Vincent Curutchet / AG2R Citröen)

Ben O'Connor sums himself up with typical Australian bluntness. "I used to be kind of a one-shot wonder. I'd do something amazing and then disappear, so it's nice that things have come together a bit more this season," he told Cyclingnews prior to the start of the third stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné.

After four seasons with Dimension Data/NTT Pro Cycling, he often showed he had bags of talent as a climber, most obviously when winning a stage of last year's Giro d'Italia at Madonna di Campiglio. But he struggled to find consistency in big stage races and the 25-year-old from Perth made what seemed like a surprise move (on both sides) to AG2R-Citroën over the winter. Yet moving to what is now one of the best-funded teams in the WorldTour is paying dividends, with O'Connor finishing 12th at Paris-Nice, and in his last outing sixth in the Tour de Romandie, just 45 seconds down on winner Geraint Thomas.

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Peter Cossins has written about professional cycling since 1993 and is a contributing editor to Procycling. He is the author of The Monuments: The Grit and the Glory of Cycling's Greatest One-Day Races (Bloomsbury, March 2014) and has translated Christophe Bassons' autobiography, A Clean Break (Bloomsbury, July 2014). 

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