Emotional 'SuperBOC' ​​from Australia surprises favourites at Tour of Spain

He wasn’t on any pre-favourite list. Ben O’Connor might win a stage, or crack the top 10 in the general classification. But the red jacket? No.

But a week later, the 28-year-old Australian O’Connor has become the surprise leader of the Vuelta a Espana. Even more surprising is his lead over the other classification riders: almost four minutes ahead of three-time winner Primoz Roglic and more than eight minutes ahead of Seb Kuss, the American who won last year’s Vuelta. That makes him a serious contender for overall victory.

O’Connor (nickname: SuperBOC) took the red jersey last Thursday, during a scorching mountain stage in Andalusia that started at a branch of the Vuelta’s main sponsor, Carrefour. He was part of a group of early escapees and rode the last 30 kilometres solo to the finish. He arrived there six and a half minutes ahead of the favourites. O’Connor now has stage wins to his name in all three Grand Tours.

O'Connor was surprised to be allowed to take so much time away from other classification riders – and almost took it as an insult. “I've already finished fourth in the Tour and the Giro,” he said after the stage. “It's not that I'm harmless. I know I'm not a racer for nothing.”

Andorra

O’Connor grew up in Subiaco, a suburb of Perth, Australia. After playing cricket, running and Australian rules football, he took up cycling at the age of 17 – a sport in which he quickly proved himself to be quite talented. At 20, he moved to Europe – the fate of every talented cyclist from Australia, a country with little cycling tradition. During the cycling season, he lives in Andorra.

O’Connor has been riding for the French service of the Decathlon-AG2R team for four years. He made his international breakthrough at the 2021 Tour de France, when he won a tough Alpine stage to the ski resort of Tignes in pouring rain. He finished fourth in the final classification – a bright future for a Tour rider.

But the following seasons were disappointing. In the 2022 Tour, he was forced to retire after several falls, and the following year he finished the race in a disappointing 17th place – something the easily flammable O'Connor found hard to accept. In the documentary series In the heart of the peloton From Netflix, it shows O'Connor bursting under his breath after his teammates helped fellow Australian and great rival Jay Hindley win the stage and the yellow jersey with a tactical sprint. “I feel betrayed and undermined,” O'Connor screams.

“Ben is an emotional, committed boy, and he gets nervous like all great athletes,” says team boss Vincent Lavenu in the same episode. “Racehorses aren’t quiet, are they?”

The relationship between O’Connor and his French team has been rocky in recent years. AG2R had high expectations of him, which he has not always been able to deliver. Then there was the language barrier: the French cycling world is not exactly English-speaking, and O’Connor’s command of the French language is tenuous at best. Furthermore, French cycling teams are known to be conservative—if not outdated—when it comes to modern training and nutrition methods. “It’s true that one of his teammates still puts a drink in his water bottle,” O’Connor told a magazine this spring. BikeRevue.

His Dutch colleague

AG2R is one of the best-run French teams, with talented riders such as Austrian Felix Gall (currently O’Connor’s main co-driver at the Vuelta) and the brothers Valentin and Aurélien Barret-Pinter. However, there are also grumblings within the team: last week, sporting director Lavenu, who founded AG2R in 1992, was summarily fired – because the board accused him of negligence in the recent doping case.

From next year, O’Connor will join the Australian cycling team Jaico Al Ula, where he will be a teammate of Dutch sprinter Dylan Groenewegen. In his last season in French service, he rediscovered his class. He finished fourth in the Giro d’Italia this spring – a performance he says he didn’t enjoy much: he gradually “settled for fourth places,” as he put it before the Vuelta. “I’d rather finish fifth than fourth.”

Since O’Connor took the red leader’s jersey, he has been riding remarkably comfortably. He said Monday during a press conference on the rest day that he was not under much pressure. His leadership position was “unexpected” and “it’s up to others to take action now.”

It will be very difficult to get O’Connor out of the red zone, as became clear during the two tough mountain stages last weekend. On Saturday, Roglic managed to claw back three-quarters of a minute, but on Sunday’s double climb of the steep Alto de Hazalanas near Granada, O’Connor didn’t let up – and even took a few seconds off his rival by the final sprint.

“I'm sure some teams will regret giving me so much time,” O'Connor said at Monday's press conference. “Although of course we won't know the answer until we get to Madrid.”

To participate




Email the editor