Australia’s Ben O’Connor, who has long considered the Tour de France a relentless and unforgiving challenge, roared back with a stunning stage 18 victory in the Alps to finally bury memories of the crashes he has suffered in recent years.<\/p>\n
O’Connor, eyes blazing with determination, launched a ferocious solo attack on the fearsome Col de la Loze and never looked back.<\/p>\n
“It’s a pretty cruel race,” O’Connor said after crossing the line alone at the Col de la Loze.<\/p>\n
“I’ve just found myself on the deck in the first two days a few times, but not really for my own fault. Stage one here, it wasn’t my fault. I was just taken out.<\/p>\n
“In Copenhagen [in 2022], same thing: sprint finish, crash in front of me, nowhere to go. And then you had the crash in 2021.<\/p>\n
“So the first couple days really haven’t treated me well at all in this race before.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Ben O’Connor crossed the finish line on his own after launching a solo attack. (Getty Images: Dario Belingheri)<\/p>\n
O’Connor, who won a stage to Tignes and finished fourth overall in 2021, has battled to replicate those highs.<\/p>\n
“Getting it done today means a lot to me,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I’m very proud of myself and very proud of the team.”<\/p>\n
O’Connor’s win came after a bold attack from the bottom of the valley before the final climb, a plan he hatched with his team’s sports director Matthew Hayman.<\/p>\n
“He told me, ‘You’ve got nothing to lose,'” O’Connor said.<\/p>\n
“If you’re going to win, you have to go from the bottom of the valley \u2026 and that’s what happened.<\/p>\n
“On the Col de la Loze, it was pretty straightforward. You either had it or you didn’t.”<\/p>\n
O’Connor switched from French squad AG2R Citroen to Australian outfit Jayco AlUla this season, a move he said brought a fresh sense of belonging.<\/p>\n
“It’s about time I finally got a big result on the board being an Aussie rider on an Aussie team,” he said.<\/p>\n
Asked whether the stage victory mattered more than a top-10 finish in Paris, O’Connor was emphatic.<\/p>\n
“Yes, definitely. Getting your hands up in the air is the most enjoyable thing,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s only when you complete a GC (general classification) and you’ve done a perfect race yourself and you’re proud of every single day that you’ve tapped it out and you’ve ticked the boxes, then that gives you a different kind of satisfaction.”<\/p>\n
Jonas Vingegaard’s attempt to dethrone Tadej Poga\u010dar at the top of the overall standings imploded in spectacular fashion on the race’s most brutal Alpine battleground.<\/p>\n
Poga\u010dar defended his crown with ice-cold precision, gaining 11 more seconds on Vingegaard and stretching his overall advantage to a commanding four minutes and 26 seconds after taking second place.<\/p>\n
“Today was brutal. Maybe the hardest stage I’ve ever done in the Tour,” admitted a drained Vingegaard after the finish.<\/p>\n
“We had a big plan, you saw it, but I couldn’t take a second on Tadej. The Tour isn’t over, still.”<\/p>\n
Reuters\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia’s Ben O’Connor, who has long considered the Tour de France a relentless and unforgiving challenge, roared back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[20576,64,63,20573,784,85,20574,6494,2845,20575],"class_list":["post-19696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-alps","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ben-oconnor","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-stage-18","tag-tadej-pogacar","tag-tour-de-france","tag-yellow-jersey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}