Ya, there is no shame in being Ben O'Connor. Winning always puts you in the spotlight but there are lots of renowned GT riders who never won a GT but still made a decent name for themselves.
To be honest, in terms of on-bike actions, more riders should strive to be Ben O'Connor. He's kind of like a Grand Tour Dan Martin, but not quite as good (or rather, it's harder to do what Martin did in the hilly classics in a Grand Tour because even if you get underestimated or take advantage of people's inaction once or twice, you don't get the instant reward but have to back it up consistently, whereas in a one-day race a simple miscalculation can result in the spoils going to an outsider). Dan Martin got enough wins and successes in hilly one-day races and medium mountain events to be worth considering as a threat, but nobody really considered him an elite puncheur of the calibre of contemporaries like Valverde, Gilbert or Purito - yet Martin won two monuments and should have won another (the horror that was Gerrans' LBL, when Martin, the only rider who had tried to make something happen in that appalling edition, crashed on the final corner allowing the worst of all possible outcomes to transpire), often because of being the only rider willing to lose in order to have a chance to win rather than back themselves in an uphill sprint against the best hill-sprinters of their day. There are a lot of riders out there who could contend that they have superior GT potential than O'Connor based on physical attributes, but have a far less impressive GT palmarès than him, and many of them will retire with a far less impressive GT palmarès than his too.
In terms of off-bike actions and behaviours, O'Connor hasn't exactly won himself many fans and I'm going to find it very difficult to cheer for him for the foreseeable future as a result, but on the bike the péloton could do with more people like him.
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