Vuelta a España Vuelta a España 2024, stage 6: Some random Carrefour - Yunquera, 185.5k

[Gargamel35]

Idiots didn't help Bora because they think they can't beat Roglič and Bora not strong enough to pull back O'Connor. Just another day in the office.

 

[FroomeWagon]

Ben O'Connor goes from 150 to 1 to win the Vuelta to 7 to 4 in one day. Amazing!

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Yup, what is it with stage 6 in the Vuelta recently and complete foolishness and underestimation of a genuinely pretty strong rider nowadays?

I know it's only 3-4 minutes he has in hand, not like it's Arroyo 2010 or Pereiro 2006, but it was enough for Giovannetti and Kuss.

 

[noob]

this is on Movistar as well.

How is this on Movistar?? :O UAE maybe but Movistar?

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Tbh I don't know what anyone was fking doing

For most of them, not a great deal

 

[Rob5091]

Did Tao Hart crash too as he came in like nearly last at 20 minutes down? Whatever the reason his Vuelta is done.

 

[QueenStagiaire]

Seems like McNulty also crashed, or felt like finishing 168th for a change.

 

[Sciatic]

How is this on Movistar?? :O UAE maybe but Movistar?

I mentioned above that this is Mas’s only chance ever to win GT. Roglic has time on him and is better—but he also has a bad back, is prob missing some training miles, and is crash-prone. If I was Mas the most painful scenario will be to finish second . . . to O’Connor!

 

[Rackham]

That's optimistic. Can't help thinking that if that were the case, he should a) have taken more time more convincingly on Tuesday and b) also whipped his teammates to actually chase today so as to not ruin the race for him.

A deficit of 5min to an on form O'Connor is a lot. Probably it's good for the race though.

I think it's awesome for the race. It now has a cool narrative (& a genuine GC chase).

It'll be Ben O'Connor versus the world whilst Rog just gets to do his thing. As I said I could be wrong but looking at the startlist & the names on it, it was like a dam waiting to burst anyway, i.e. someone was going to get time in a breakaway. When there's Carapaz, Yates, Arensman, O'Connor, Carlos Rodriguez etc. (I've probably missed some) all down in GC, the odds were one of them would at some point get in the break & gain time.

It was O'Connor. Well done to him. Now there's over two weeks of fun to come.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

With Kuss it was actually at least 1-2 teams trying to chase and Kuss was helped a bunch by teammates in the break. This was a super long solo on up and down terrain with nobody behind giving a ***.

I was thinking more about them letting him get the advantage in the first place, rather than how it panned out once he was up there. They also let O'Connor get the advantage, but it was the reverse, they held the break on a leash for a long while, and then just decided to stop bothering as though he isn't a guy who's been 4th in both the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia before.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I mentioned above that this is Mas’s only chance ever to win GT. Roglic has time on him and is better—but he also has a bad back, is prob missing some training miles, and is crash-prone. If I was Mas the most painful scenario will be to finish second . . . to O’Connor!

That would probably be the most Enric Mas scenario, though.

 

[Valv.Piti]

Tbh most of the big team were kinda thin in the end and some of the bigger teams took turns trying to bring the gap down (Bahrain, UAE, Movistar), but O'Connor was insanely strong. That has to be part of the story as well even though they obviously could have managed it better. Some of the interviews confirm this as well, and so does the gaps to the rest of the break - never has he had better legs, and he probably never will have better legs as well. Couple that with a few teams too afraid of using riders like Dani Martinez, Quintana and riders in similar veins for whatever reason and you get this, but the field definitely wasn't just going slow. Movistar pulled for like 15-20 km with strong rouleurs and did jack.

 

[Ripper]

Not really. O'Connor has a big chance to win now but it's definitely not sown up.

And there is obvious terrain on stage nine and stage 20 to go early. Probably also other stages.

But he has a really strong team. So it will be a very hard nut to crack.

Totally agree. He might fall apart, he might hold it. He made a fan out of me though, as that was smart and daring as f^ck, and he singled out a great stage to try (and of course, had the legs). For someone who seems to be really hard on himself, it was extra gratifying. Also, I was thinking WTF are the other teams thinking here? ... turns out, they weren't

 

[Unchained]

Okay I didn't follow the stage. WTF happened?!?!?

They all drunk except for O'Conner or what?

Maybe the camera didn't show riders, team bus TV watching crew, team cars all stopping for delicious ham,beer ,cheese and olives!!
You see the math, O'Connor definitely deserved some attention and respect. Last season and this you see riders like Kuss, Gee get ignored or completely dismissed and end up with results. Drunk or asleep can be the only explanation

 

[Unchained]

Not for nothing, CN reporting that UAE still had faith in Yates, today he lost a little more time on main group.

 

[Unchained]

Oconnor clearly took advantage of the start location by buying plenty of carbs from the Carrefour, and stuffing them to his pockets, whilst the other riders where gossiping and waiting for the start

This meant he could consume much more carb during the stage than normal and maintain his effort.

Expert racecraft

This is wrong!! If eating and grocery shopping made you a good bike racer, I would be doing the Vuelta...lol!!
and if carbs make you a champion, I would be in the rainbow jersey and I would have a pizza sponsor not Remco!! I love your theory!! Lol!!

 

[Sciatic]

I think it's awesome for the race. It now has a cool narrative (& a genuine GC chase).

It'll be Ben O'Connor versus the world whilst Rog just gets to do his thing. As I said I could be wrong but looking at the startlist & the names on it, it was like a damn waiting to burst anyway, i.e. someone was going to get time in a breakaway. When there's Carapaz, Yates, Arensman, O'Connor, Carlos Rodriguez etc. (I've probably missed some) all down in GC, the odds were one of them would at some point get in the break & gain time.

It was O'Connor. Well done to him. Now there's over two weeks of fun to come.

I can see that is going to make some of the random and medium mtn stages more exciting to watch. But I don’t like it. Because to me this is like the entire race dynamic decided by a mechanical or crash, which most people don’t enjoy. The mechanical breakdown here is the the cognitive functioning of the various team DS’s. I will admit to a bias about this because the control that team managers (the DS equivalent) have subsumed in baseball is ruining the sport for me. The similarities with cycling is that you have managers/DS in sports where the sporting aspect would go pretty well without them involved at all during the official race/game, and thus needing to justify their value. To do this they will try to control as much as possible, sometimes to the detriment of their teams because they need to continually establish they are in charge. And often this can mean sticking with whatever system or strategy they have set up, even when it’s noT fitting the situation.

I know the argument was over long ago, but this was (for me) always the biggest damage from race radios—you give a manager/boss/owner who has only a nominal amount of control on operations an opportunity to take MORE control, they will always do so.
Off soapbox now.

 

[Unchained]

Spanish broadcast is in front of mobile clinic, reporting on condition of Rigaberto Uran..no status

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Maybe the camera didn't show riders, team bus TV watching crew, team cars all stopping for delicious ham,beer ,cheese and olives!!
You see the math, O'Connor definitely deserved some attention and respect. Last season and this you see riders like Kuss, Gee get ignored or completely dismissed and end up with results. Drunk or asleep can be the only explanation

I get it when somebody's completely unproven. You do see a bit of flexibility given and sometimes there are some oddities in the Vuelta with people who have more left in the tank at this time of the year than others overachieving, like when Tomasz Marczyński got multiple stage wins one year, and there are a few examples of riders who are completely unproven - as Gee was in 2023 - or who have long been part of the péloton and are known to be no GC threat, who have been able to escape and win in that fashion. Ben King in the 2018 Vuelta is a good example of that. Maybe even Jay Vine in the 2022 Vuelta.

Gee's 2023 Giro was basically like Johnny Hoogerland's 12th in the 2009 Vuelta, so people didn't really have any idea of whether he could actually do a GC bid of any kind. O'Connor in the 2022 Tour is similar - he'd got three GTs under his belt, all between 20th and 32nd, so he could clearly climb reasonably well but he wasn't taken seriously as a threat and allowed to get up the road repeatedly, but now he's not only scored a top 5 finish but backed it up with another one (and a further top 10 to boot), he's really too dangerous to allow this kind of rope. I mean, so was Kuss, even taking into account that he'd never really raced for himself at a race like that before, he'd still been 8th in 2021 and had 5 other GT top 20s just because of his climbing performances in service of leaders or escaping in breaks. It wasn't like his being able to climb with the best should have been news to anybody.

 

[Didinho]

So Oscar Pereiro gonna win this.

 

[Peyroteo94]

If a guy like O'Connor wins a GT, I know nothing about cycling anymore.

 

[Sciatic]

I was thinking more about them letting him get the advantage in the first place, rather than how it panned out once he was up there. They also let O'Connor get the advantage, but it was the reverse, they held the break on a leash for a long while, and then just decided to stop bothering as though he isn't a guy who's been 4th in both the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia before.

That was the most frustrating part—they could have still committed to go hard at the end of the stage to start taking time back.

 

[Eeslliw]

I think some of you are downplaying just how strong of a ride O’Connor did today. I mean he put four and a half minutes to other breakaway riders who weren’t exactly nobodys. Not much was “given”, he earned it with his super legs.

If he manages to win this Vuelta it will be fully deserving. I mean if we compare this ride and last year’s Kuss, today was just on another level.

 

[VayaVayaVaya]

We'll see.

I still think Rog has his Tour legs & I still think the only threat he faces here is the tarmac.

All things being equal (like if Rog displays the same power he had in his battle versus Vinge, Pog & Evenepoel on stage 11 of the TdF last month), minutes will be handed out later all over this race.

I hope so, but Rog just doesn’t usually tend to ride that way. He needs to ride like he did on Angliru all Vuelta more or less.

I'm actually inclined to think nobody is gonna try to take it from O Connor apart from Roglic, and Roglic isn't gonna fire up 1st Hazallanas come Sunday. Call me a sceptic.

I don't think AG2R are that strong though, their climbers are hyper specialist, they'll suck in a valley.

I’m in this camp, probably because I’m a beaten down Contador / Dumoulin / Roglic fan…

Let's just assume everyone thinks that if they disrespect Ben enough he will have a breakdown. The've watched Unchained.

Lol. So true.

 

[slow_climber]

I mentioned above that this is Mas’s only chance ever to win GT. Roglic has time on him and is better—but he also has a bad back, is prob missing some training miles, and is crash-prone. If I was Mas the most painful scenario will be to finish second . . . to O’Connor!

Same for Almeida. Probably his last chance to show his future is not just as a domestique for Ayuso! Is he going to be able to gap O'Connor on any of the remaining stages and take 5 mins? Has just made this race a lot more interesting.