Cycling - La Vuelta 2024 - Ben O'Connor : "Yes, you can say I had a hard time, but it’s not the worst case scenario"
Ben O'Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) a montré des premiers signes de faiblesse ce mercredi sur la 11e étape du Tour d'Espagne. L'Australien n'a pas été en mesure de suivre le rythme soutenu de Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe) et d'Enric Mas (Movistar) dans la dernière montée de la journée, le Puerto Cruxeiras (2,8km à 9,2%). Il n'a pas non plus réussi à suivre Mattias Skjelmose (Lidl-Trek), Mikel Landa (Soudal Quick-Step) et Carlos Rodriguez (INEOS Grenadiers) qui montaient au train. Sur la ligne, le maillot rouge a concédé 37 secondes au premier groupe des favoris.
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00:00Yeah, you can see I had a hard time, it's a pretty punchy finish and yeah, I think there's
00:23quite a few guys that were super, super strong today but it's not the worst case scenario.
00:29You say a few guys, did you see today that it's not only Roglic but other riders are
00:35contesting the podium?
00:36I'm not naive, I know there's plenty of guys who are dangerous in this race so yeah, I
00:42think I was under no illusion that I'm just going to be walking through the park with
00:47this.
00:48But there are bigger mountains to come?
00:50Yeah, I think the terrain will suit me a little bit better.
00:55Once again I've had better days and I feel like that's the story of this La Vuelta España
00:58for myself so far.
01:01Good day, average day, good day, average day, so hopefully I can change that and be good
01:05every day.
01:06It was hard, a bit too hard and then I just wasn't good enough to hold on over the top
01:12so I'm a bit disappointed today but at stage what, is it 11 or 12 done?
01:1811.
01:19So it's 11 done, so yeah, 12 tomorrow and still in the red jersey.
01:22You had teammates there?
01:24They came back on a flat and yeah, I guess we had to do a lot of work today and the boys
01:31were super, super good yesterday and they were really good in Granada so it's really
01:37hard to expect them to be in front of me every single day because in the end I'm in the red
01:40jersey and I should be the one following the guys at the front.
01:43I'm just annoyed at myself today to be fair, you get that demeanour but I've still got
01:48a decent lead and whatever, the strongest guy is going to win this race and if it's
01:52me or not, so be it.