Team Jayco-AlUla's Australian rider Ben O'Connor is presented on stage before the start of the Vuelta a Espana, a 183 km race between Torino - Reggia di Venaria and Novara, in Italy's Piemonte region, on August 23, 2025. (Photo by Marco BERTORELLO / AFP) (Photo by MARCO BERTORELLO/AFP via Getty Images)

‘It sucked actually, the whole Tour de France’ – Ben O’Connor gets racing mojo back at Vuelta a España after tough July

August 31, 2025

Winning the hardest stage of the Tour de France will surely remain a major highlight of Ben O’Connor‘s career long after he has retired. But globally, injuries and crashes and subsequent GC setbacks meant that overall the Australian could not enjoy or do the racing the way he wanted – and at the Vuelta a España the Jayco-AlUla leader is feeling far more upbeat all round.

As the runner-up overall in the 2024 Vuelta sees it, compared to the 2025 Tour, in the Spanish equivalent event, he’s able to do what he calls “some straightforward racing.”

So far, O’Connor has quietly kept himself in the GC battle without any standout moments, but without any disasters, either. After shedding a little time in Andorra but then staying with the main group at the second Pyrenean summit finish of Cerler, he’s currently lying 17th at 3:53 on leader Torstein Træen (Bahrain Victorious).

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“Yesterday [Friday] was good, much better [than Thursday], the final climb wasn’t as hard as we probably expected, so it was a shame not to get more out of it, but there’s plenty more to come,” O’Connor told reporters at the stage 8 start in Monzón.

Regarding the major GC battles, he said, “I think just purely the nature of the course has been pretty straightforward, and ultimately not that technical – but it’s going to come.”

O’Connor has already looked at the Bilbao stage in the route book. It’s a route with a certain degree of similarity to an Ardennes Classics, with over 3,000 metres of vertical climbing, and seven classified ascents. Last amongst them before a descent into the city are the ultra-punchy Alto del Vivero and Alto del Pike, both of which featured as the last climbs in the 2023 Tour de France opening stage around the Basque seaport.

Having raced with African, French and now Australian teams, O’Connor has had plenty of chances to compare different squads and racing strategies over the years. At the Vuelta, UAE have opted for a strategy of claiming stage wins while they can, rather than building an entire team around a leader, as Visma have done with Vingegaard.

But if the startling contrast between Ayuso’s performance on Thursday and Friday – losing massive amounts of GC time on one Pyrenean climb, only to go for the stage has surprised many, O’Connor is not amongst their number.

“I think it’s smart, I think it’s almost a good idea – someone like Ayuso, he’s clearly been able to do GC in the past, and he either can’t be bothered to do it here, or doesn’t think he can scrape up to his standards, so why not go for stages and rack them up,” O’Connor asked rhetorically.

“You’re still a quality bike rider, and you’re going to be able to get a good day out, it just doesn’t mean you need to do GC day in day out. So I think it’s a good idea,” he reflected.

Far from UAE needing to be all-protecting of their now sole GC leader João Almeida, O’Connor argued, the relatively easy racing in the opening Vuelta stages meant that an ‘all-for-one’ approach was not yet necessary.

“It’s been quite straightforward already, it’ll be different once we’re in trickier days,” O’Connor concluded. “When there’s a one or two-hour breakaway fight, that’s when you really need the boys around you.”

Those tougher stages will definitely arrive in the Vuelta, particularly towards the end of the second week from Bilbao onwards. But as O’Connor sees it, for now neither UAE nor he need to get overly stressed: there will be plenty of time further down the road for that in this year’s Vuelta a España.