Close your eyes and picture the following scene:
The starting gun sounds at the New York City Marathon and elite runners sprint over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and into Brooklyn. Suddenly, Eluid Kipchoge and a small group of pre-race favorites stop at a bodega—they sip coffees and munch bacon, egg, and cheeses while the mid-pack guys gallop out of sight. One minute goes by, then three, then five.
Finally, Kipchoge and his pals pay their bill, jog onto the course, and begin chasing after the leaders, leaving bewildered fans to wonder if they can close the gap before Central Park, or if they’ve been undone by Napoleon-level hubris.
Sounds pretty improbable, right? Well, that scenario is currently playing out at cycling’s three-week Vuelta a España, and hardcore cycling fans—including yours truly—are transfixed by this race across Spain between a proverbial tortoise and hare.
After 11 of 21 stages, Slovenian racer Primoz Roglic, a three-time Vuelta champion, and the other pre-race favorites trail an Australian cyclist named Ben O’Connor, who is no slouch, but also isn’t a top-tier star. Roglic and his rivals essentially took a siesta on the race’s sixth stage and allowed O’Connor to get a massive head start in the battle for the red jersey—the getup worn by the race’s overall leader.
And now, they must chip away at O’Connor’s advantage, one stage at a time.
The Tour’s Drunk Uncle
Fans of the Tour de France are accustomed to the predictable ebb-and-flow that occurs during each stage. Shortly after the racers start, six or seven lesser-known riders accelerate up the road to form the day’s breakaway, while the stars of the sport stay in the peloton. For the next few hours, the race’s worker bees, or domestiques, ride a steady tempo at the front of the peloton to keep the breakaway’s advantage to no more than three minutes.
Then, as the race approaches the finish, or a major climb, the peloton accelerates and reels the group back in, setting up star riders to battle for victory. Bing, bang, boom. This controlled style of racing is especially evident during the Tour’s first half—the overall winner is crowned on cumulative time, so star riders tend to keep an eye on each other and wait for the mountains that come in weeks two and three.
The Vuelta a España is like the Tour’s drunk uncle—unpredictable and impossible to control. Some days the breakaway will swell to 20 or 30 riders. Oftentimes the peloton will simply give up and allow the front group to contest the victory. And every so often, a guy with a legitimate shot of winning the overall will slip into the breakaway and get a huge advantage on his rivals.
During last year’s Vuelta, American racer Sepp Kuss gained a huge advantage over the pre-race favorites by joining a big breakaway on stage 6. Kuss then defended his advantage from his own teammates and eventually won the overall by just 8 seconds.
Situations like this one are why hardcore cycling fans often prefer the race around Spain to the Tour de France. It’s harder to predict, and almost every year something completely out of left field occurs, like a windstorm, or a poorly-organized finish line, or a 41-year-old guy winning.
Why is the Vuelta so kooky? The stakes are lower in Spain than in France, so the desire to control every inch of the course is less intense. Some riders are exhausted from the long season, while others are fresh. And temperatures regularly soar into triple digits, which saps people’s legs, lungs, and willpower.
History Repeats Itself
Kuss’ winning strategy was front-of-mind during stage 6 of this year’s Vuelta. Roglic began the day in the red jersey and appeared to be the strongest guy in the race. But then he got careless or tired.
After a frenetic early half of the stage, a breakaway formed with 34 riders in it, among them O’Connor. Behind, Roglic’s Red Bull-Bora team refused to set the pace for the peloton, and the main group dropped way behind. At times, Roglic and other riders in the main pack looked like they were sightseeing. The breakaway, meanwhile, opened a seven-minute gap over the field.
When the peloton finally snapped out of its slumber and mounted a chase, it was too late. O’Connor accelerated out of the breakaway and won the stage, and the peloton limped across the finish line six minutes later. In the new overall standings, called the general classification, O’Connor led Roglic by 4:51—a massive head start.
“KAPOW BEN O’CONNOR BRINGS IT IN!” 😮
Ben O’Connor shocks the peloton and rides his way into the leaders jersey at La Vuelta. He now has a win in all three grand tours what a ride! 👏🔴 pic.twitter.com/5xeJHdwjWX
— Eurosport (@eurosport) August 22, 2024
Underestimating Ben O’Connor
Why did the peloton give Ben O’Connor so much time? He’s no slowpoke: O’Connor finished fourth overall at both the 2021 Tour de France and 2024 Giro d’Italia.
My sneaking suspicion is that Roglic and the Vuelta stars held a viewing party for season two of Netflix’s cycling docuseries Unchained: Tour de France, which aired back in June. One of the season’s eight episodes focuses almost entirely on O’Connor and his rollercoaster-like emotions. Clips show O’Connor erupting with f-bombs, slamming car doors, and generally acting like a frustrated toddler when things go wrong at the Tour. Interviews with O’Connor’s coaches present the conundrum that his French team, called Decathlon AG2R, must manage: O’Connor has the talent but not the temperament to win.
“Ben is an aggressive rider with a strong character, who sometimes struggles to control his emotions,” team manager Julien Jardine says in the episode.
“We are working with Ben so he can control his emotions when things go wrong,” Jardine adds.
An explosive temper may seem trivial, but controlling one’s emotions is a huge part of winning a grand tour. Every rider faces at least one setback during a three-week race—a crash, flat tire, or mental lapse—but the sport’s very best know how to stay cool amid calamities and limit their losses to just a few seconds here and there. Whether or not O’Connor can keep his calm during the final half of the Vuelta only adds to the intrigue.
The Margin Narrows
After 11 stages, Roglic and the other top riders have already taken a big bite out of O’Connor’s advantage. On stage 8, Roglic dropped O’Connor and took back 56 seconds; on stage 11 he grabbed another 37. O’Connor’s gap has tumbled from 4:51 to 3:16, and there are ten hard stages left to go. Every one represents an opportunity for Roglic to attack and bring himself closer to the red jersey.
🚀 … and Roglic and Mas are off!
¡Y se marchan 🇸🇮 @rogla y 🇪🇸 @EnricMasNicolau! #LaVuelta24 pic.twitter.com/TvyHnytZAU
— La Vuelta (@lavuelta) August 28, 2024
This is one of the reasons why hardcore cycling fans like myself often prefer the Vuelta to the Tour. During the Tour, organizers chart out flat stages, mountainous routes, and individual time trials—each different type of route has its own controlled style of racing.
But at the Vuelta, organizers like to toss in a super steep climb near the finish of each stage as a way to inject unpredictability and action into the race. On long, grinding climbs in the Alps, dropped riders can pace off of their teammates to catch back on; that’s not the case on a 22-percent ramp. Short and sheer ascents often boil the race down to mano-a-mano clashes, and a rider suffering from bad legs can hemorrhage time.
Yep, even a hare who is minutes behind can catch a tortoise.
