Jayco-AlUla may have lost one of their strongest riders in the discipline when Luke Durbridge crashed on stage 2 but even one man down the Australian squad walked away from Tuesday's team time trial at Paris-Nice with a second place that sets team leader, Ben O’Connor, up well for the days ahead.
The Australian team was second to set off in the stage 3 team time trial, shedding Michael Hepburn, Max Walscheid, team pursuit Olympic gold medallist Kelland O’Brien and Swiss road race champion Mauro Schmid along the 28.4km course to leave Michael Matthews and Ben O’Connor to lead the charge at the end of the stage 3 race against the clock.
“Obviously with these TTTs it's difficult when you can finish with just one guy or the whole team but we tried to prioritise the strongest guys in this sort of finish and then the GC guy would try and come to the line first,” said Michael Matthews, who was part of the gold medal winning Australian mixed team time trial at the World Championships last year.
“I was just told to go full gas for the last kilometre to try to get as much time as we could, with Ben on my wheel, and I think we gained as much time as possible doing that.”
Jayco-AlUla stopped the clock at 30:41:29, delivering an average of 55.5kph on the lumpy course. It was no surprise that this took them straight to the top of the early results board, given they were just second to start, but then it became increasingly clear just how strong their time was as others started rolling through the intermediate checks and toward the finish line.
The next team to start, Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale – O’Connor’s former team – finished 24 seconds slower and then Ineos Grenadiers, Movistar, Groupama-FDJ, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Lidl-Trek and EF Education-EasyPost all came through without challenging Jayco-AlUla's mark.
It wasn’t until a full-strength and well-practiced Visma-Lease a Bike crossed the line, with last year’s overall Paris-Nice winner Matteo Jorgenson leading Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard, that Jayco-AlUla had to vacate the top spot. The Dutch team clinched the lead with a 14-second advantage.
“I don’t think we could have gone faster,” said O’Connor in a team statement. “It sucked to lose Luke yesterday, he’s a huge engine and there were parts there where I think one extra guy would have helped. I still think it was a great ride.”
It may have been tough to set aside what could have been had four-time Australian time trial winner Durbridge been among the ranks, rather than out with a broken collarbone, but it was still a stage 3 ride from Jayco-AlUla that shifted O’Connor up to fourth overall.
After the team time trial, O'Connor sits on the same time as third-placed teammate Matthews – who is bound to drift back in the pivotal mountain days of the eight-stage Paris-Nice. The pair are 21 seconds behind race leader and 2024 winner Jorgenson while his Visma-Lease a Bike teammate Vingegaard sits in second, 15 seconds ahead of the Australian Jayco-AlUla duo.
A number of other key GC rivals, however, now have some ground to make up. Aleksandr Vlasov (Red Bull-Bora Hansgrohe) is the closest at 31 seconds back from the race lead and 10 seconds behind O’Connor, Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek) is 36 seconds behind the race lead while João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates) is 48 seconds in arrears of yellow along with O’Connor’s former teammate Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale). Santiago Buitrago and Bahrain Victorious teammate Lenny Martinez have a substantial 1:08 deficit on the overall to try and reel in after finishing 12th in the team time trial.
