Three weeks is a long time to stare at the writing on the wall. All year Ben O’Connor’s entire existence had revolved around the Tour de France but now, on the very opening weekend of the race, he knew his podium challenge was already floundering.
After dropping clumps of seconds in Bilbao and San Sebastián, O’Connor could guess what the remainder of his Tour had in store. That sinking feeling was borne out by the losses he incurred during the race’s week one foray into the Pyrenees. Each time he climbed aboard the AG2R Citroën bus after those early setbacks, he was already fast-tracking his way through the grieving process.
Last year, O’Connor’s Tour challenge was ruined by a crash on stage 2 in Denmark, but he persisted in fighting a losing battle against his injuries for more than a week before eventually, belatedly pulling out. This time out, he skipped denial and went straight to anger.
“Initially, I was really angry the first couple of times it happened – just not good enough,” O’Connor tells Cyclingnews. “Then eventually you get used to it, but you’re still short of temper, I would say. I think the boys knew that and they were good with me. Then eventually I got used to it, more or less. But there’s still always a little flicker of a flame that wasn’t able to be quenched.”
In 2022, AG2R management had looked to cajole O’Connor through his ordeal, but, as the Netflix camera demonstrated, Julien Jurdie’s well-intentioned urging had probably served only to exacerbate the rider’s own sense of frustration. Mercifully, the Australian was afforded a little more privacy for the mourning period last July, even if this latest Tour setback was altogether more disappointing.
“2022 was very different because I was injured, so I kind of had to write that off. I should have just abandoned earlier. That would have made me feel better about the whole thing,” O’Connor says. “2023 was just disappointing because I didn’t achieve what I wanted to. From a GC point of view, I wasn’t even close. I felt off at the race. I was a bit sick, and it took a long time for that to clear after the Tour de France. Something just wasn’t right.”
And yet, as O’Connor’s time losses mounted up during the opening week, a curious thing happened: he found himself beginning to enjoy the Tour. Yes, the race itself continued to vex him, but as the podium slid further and further out of view, the kaleidoscopic human festival along the roadside began to sharpen into focus. Sometimes it helps to remember that it’s never only about the bike.
On O’Connor’s debut in 2021, when he placed fourth overall in Paris, COVID-19 restrictions made for a rather muted atmosphere, while the miserable conditions in the Alps also served to deter the crowds. “I won the stage at Tignes and that was incredible, something I’ll never forget, but it wasn’t the Tour like I had imagined it,” he says, while his second appearance, of course, was an exercise in pain management and little more. Now, for the first time, he felt able to soak in the atmosphere. Even as he picked his way through the ruins of a broken dream, he could appreciate that there were worse ways to make a living.
“I enjoyed the actual Tour de France itself more than 2021, just not from the results perspective,” O’Connor explains. “The atmosphere was ridiculous the whole way through. I don’t know if that was because of this Netflix series or whether this was just a normal Tour de France and I just hadn’t experienced it before, but it was an eye-opener. That’s something I won’t take for granted, that feeling of being in the biggest race in the world.”
In time, that feeling translated itself into performances. O’Connor placed third at Issoire in week two, after making the break on arguably the most intense day of the Tour, and again at Poligny, two days from Paris. In between, he was most prominent on the Col de la Loze stage, riding strongly to tee up teammate Felix Gall’s eventual victory. “It’s ironic how I was a bit shit for a lot of it but then I found my best for probably the three hardest days,” O’Connor smiles. “Weird.”
'This is what cycling is about, it’s about sacrifice at times'
It was reassurance, as if it were needed, of his powers of endurance, but O’Connor still finished the Tour empty-handed, a distant 17th overall. “You can be happy that you raced well on those days, but in the end, I still lost,” he says. “Winning a stage would have saved my Tour, but I didn’t get anything from that point of view. It leaves you wanting.”
There was some consolation, mind, from the fact that Gall’s victory saved AG2R’s Tour, while the Austrian also weighed in with a haul of WorldTour points with 8th place overall. Rather than feel overshadowed by Gall’s display, O’Connor’s overriding emotion was relief. He made a point of interrupting his teammate’s flash interview in Courchevel to wrap him in a bear hug of congratulations.
“I’m so glad he was there,” O’Connor says. “Look, we’re a French team, and if you don’t perform on the Tour, it doesn’t look very good at all. It definitely doesn’t feel very good either, so I was glad he was there moving super well, because if not we would have been in a bit of trouble.
“Working for him was really easy. I had my chance, and I fluffed it with the Bilbao stage. If I was good enough, I would for sure be looking to ride for myself, but I wasn’t. You have to be honest. This is what cycling is about, it’s about sacrifice at times.”
By most accounts, the sacrifices required to compete at cycling’s top level are rising year on year to almost unsustainable levels. Then again, the observation is hardly unique to the 21st century peloton. Much like veteran riders complaining about neo-pros lacking respect, every era in cycling history has been marked by wonderment at the general rising standards and concern at how to keep pace with that progress.
New phenomenon or not, however, it’s certainly true that being a pro rider – and, in particular, being a GC contender – is a lifestyle choice that demands a most extreme level of commitment. In recent seasons, some notable names have walked away from the game at a strikingly young age, citing waning enthusiasm, especially when faced with diminishing returns on their considerable investments of time and labour.
O’Connor, for his part, accepts that his efforts – all those days at altitude, all that time away from friends and family – might not necessarily translate to success. That highwire act is simply part of the bargain, and he has no complaints.
“I enjoy it when it works out,” he says. “It’s shit when it doesn’t work out, because you feel like you sacrificed a lot of different things for nothing. You spent time away for nothing, or maybe you didn’t go out to the restaurant some night, and in the end, it was for nothing – that’s what you feel like when it goes wrong. But when it goes right, you’re stoked, and you can celebrate afterwards. It all makes up for it and you can forget about the harder moments. It all makes sense.
“You only have to remind yourself to enjoy it when you’re going poorly, and I think the Tour was an important one for me in that regard. Even if the performance wasn’t very good, it’s a life memory I’m going to have. That’s the kind of thing you need to remember and not to take for granted. Everyone says, ‘we’re all going to burn out,’ but it’s about what you’re mentally able to cope with yourself – and also, we decide to do it ourselves.”
'The only time I haven’t performed is when I’ve been sick'
In a similar way, O’Connor has no qualms about carrying the weight of team leadership. It was, after all, something he actively sought out when he joined AG2R from NTT at the end of 2020, buoyed by a stylish victory at Madonna di Campiglio at that Autumn’s Giro d’Italia.
When results started arriving consistently in 2021, his responsibilities grew. Now entering his fourth year at the team, rebranded this winter as Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale, O’Connor insists he has never felt inhibited by the pressures of his role.
“I really enjoy it, and the only time I haven’t performed is when I’ve been sick,” he says. “If you were just underperforming in general, then I think the leadership role would really take a hit, because you would feel like you’re not good enough and you don’t deserve the boys sacrificing themselves for you.
“When you come down ill, it feels more like it’s completely out of your hands, but you still feel a lot of guilt. You know you’ve put a lot of effort in, and the boys are trying to help you, but you just can’t get it done. But that’s more frustrating than anything.
"You bear the responsibility for it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love it. I think I’m physically capable of doing it. If you didn’t have that self-belief, you wouldn’t really be a good leader.”
When O’Connor secured fourth place at the 2021 Tour, he spoke of a need to prove himself all over again by replicating or bettering that result. Circumstances – a torn glute muscle in 2022 and illness this year – have limited him the past two Julys, but his body of work across the past two seasons has surely allayed any nagging fear that his debut Tour was an aberration. Placing eighth on last year’s Vuelta a España after a limited build-up confirmed his aptitude for three-week racing, while back-to-back podium finishes at the Dauphiné hardly came about by chance.
“I was top ten in every stage race I did last year, so that means I was fighting with the best every time. There’s no doubting that,” he says.
“I don’t go into races worried that I’m not good enough. I think I can perform with the best under pretty much any circumstance, except punchy technical courses. I’m not a worn-out stone. I still feel like I’m young enough, even in an age of very talented young guys, I don’t think I’m behind them. I kind of feel I’ve reached a level and I’m still only 27.”
By O’Connor’s reckoning, only two riders are definitively beyond his reach, namely the two men who have shared the last four Tours between them. Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard, he concedes, are “out of this world,” at least in June and July, but he considers himself among the select cadre racing for the place just behind them. “You always think about that spot,” he says.
It remains to be seen, mind, if the Tour will be the centrepiece of O’Connor’s season in 2024. His own preference would be to return to the Giro d'Italia, where he so impressed in his Grand Tour debut in 2018 before crashing out in the final week. His fellow Western Australian Jai Hindley’s overall victory in 2022, meanwhile, might also have encouraged him to consider the possibilities offered by the corsa rosa, but he is aware, too, that July is his team’s raison d’être.
'I’d love to do the Giro but I’m on a French team and the Tour is super important'
No firm plans for O’Connor’s 2024 schedule were unveiled at the presentation of the revamped Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale last week, though the emergence of Gall and the arrival of sprinter Sam Bennett might offer him a chance to angle his campaign slightly differently. For now, the only certainty is that he is eager to tackle two Grand Tours in 2024.
“I would like to do a change. I’d love to do the Giro but I’m on a French team and the Tour is super important,” he says. “I’m definitely going to do two Grand Tours next year, but I’m not sure which ones. I’d love to do the Giro again, that’s for sure, but the Tour is the Tour…”
Wherever O’Connor races in 2024, it will be with the ambition of finishing on the podium. Despite the hegemony of Jumbo-Visma and UAE Team Emirates, who filled eight of the nine podium spots on offer at Grand Tours in 2023, he doesn’t feel his prospects are limited by not racing for one of those teams.
“You always think the grass is greener on the other side, but you also sign a contract and that’s where you are,” he says. “My team was really, really good coming into the Tour this year. I just didn’t perform and that was the shitty thing about it – I didn’t just let myself down, I let the whole team down.”
One change is certain at the start of 2024, mind. After racing the Tour Down Under last January, O’Connor will skip the race this time around, and he also made a conscious decision to limit his time at home in Perth during the off-season to a fortnight. The bulk of his training for the new campaign will take place around his European base of Andorra. The wintry conditions are part of the appeal.
“When it gets a bit grim or snowy or cold in early December, those short daytime hours actually bring me pleasure. It’s nice to feel cosy,” O’Connor says. “Having a double summer can be quite rough on your body, it gets stressed by the heat. Whereas when you have a winter, your body changes a bit with the season. Personally, I really like that change. I think it’s important, and you feel it in your bones as well.”
Winter and summer, like victory and defeat, are all part of the cycle. The wheel keeps turning.
