Ben O’Connor: I was the dumbest guy in the Giro d'Italia

Ben O’Connor had 14 kilometres of contemplation time as he descended from the summit of Oropa to the Decathlon-AG2R team bus after stage 2 of the Giro d’Italia, but it was not enough to take any edge off his frustration.

We won’t repeat his exact words here; suffice to say they echoed through the car park.

The Australian had been the first rider to respond when Tadej Pogačar lit the touch paper 4.5km from the top of the famous climb, and the only one able to follow the Giro’s outstanding favourite for any length of time. But the dream turned to a nightmare as he was not only spat out by Pogačar but then by the next group of riders.

He had paid for his efforts, gone into the red, and, as he put it, “exploded”.

As for the frustration, a shower seemed to do the trick, as O’Connor emerged from the bus with a self-deprecating grin.

“When you sail too close to the sun, you get stung,” he told GCN. “I was brave. I always wanted to try and follow Pog, but I was probably the dumbest guy in the race.

“I followed for too long, then I just exploded. It’s a shame because I definitely feel like I was the second strongest guy, but probably the least intelligent.”

© Getty Images

O'Connor follows Pogačar's opening attack on Oropa

O’Connor defended the premise of his decision to go with Pogačar, but acknowledged that his enthusiasm got the better of him and made him lose sight of cold rationale.

“I felt great, so I was like why not, you’re here to race,” O’Connor explained. “I never look at numbers at all in a race on a climb. If I’m solo perhaps, but when you’re attacking, you never ever look - just race on instinct. Though perhaps it would have aided me a bit if I’d looked down and seen what I was doing.”

What he was doing was going “way above my lactate ability”.

When Pogačar issued a secondary kick only a couple of hundred metres after his first, O’Connor had to relent. That’s not exactly when the lights went out. He continued to ride hard when he was caught by Geraint Thomas, despite the Welshman declining to offer up a turn. When the pair were caught by a group of 10, though, O'Connor dramatically fell off the back, and from there it was panic stations.

“I didn’t realise I was so far in the red until too late perhaps," O'Connor said. "Pog looked around, saw I was on his wheel and clearly wanted to be alone, so he hit it again, and I found my limit. I thought I could hold onto it. But I gambled a bit too much and made a pretty big mistake.”

'I was pretty angry with myself'

O’Connor hauled himself to the finish line, stopping the clock with a deficit of one minute second to Pogačar and 27 seconds to the best of the rest, who were Thomas and Dani Martinez (Bora-Hansgrohe).

He may have been able to talk about it all in good humour, but he was by no means laughing it off, and every so often the grin would be replaced by a frown, the self-deprecation turning to self-flagellation.

“It was stupid. I didn’t need to lose time today. I should have gained time," he stated.

“I’ve got a couple of good guys here who like to make a joke or two, but I can tell you my first reaction wasn’t to smile - I was pretty angry with myself today. It wasn't good enough.”

Asked if he could take heart from feeling, if only very briefly, like the second strongest in the race, he said: “It’s the fastest to the line, not the fastest to follow Pogi. That’s just how it is.”

O’Connor will now have three flatter days to chew over his mistake and gee himself up for the next big general classification encounters. All is by no means lost, with so much of the Giro still to run, but that sense of enthusiasm has been heavily tempered.

“I learned a big lesson today,” he concluded.

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