It’s far too soon to tell if this was a good move for O’Connor who had the best year of his career in 2024, finishing second in the Vuelta a España with a stage win, second in the World Championship Road Race, winning the World Championship Mixed Relay with his Australian teammates, finishing second in both the UAE Tour and the Tour of the Alps, and placing fourth in the Giro d’Italia. He racked up 4,131 UCI points and was the main reason his former team currently sits sixth in the UCI World Team Rankings, ahead of INEOS Grenadiers and Alpecin-Deceuninck.
Jayco AlUla wants some of that magic, though the team had a very good year too, winning 25 races, including two Vuelta stages (by Eddie Dunbar), a Tour de France stage (by sprinter Dylan Groenewegen), the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec (Michael Matthews), the National Road Race Championships of the Netherlands (Groenewegen), Switzerland (Mauro Schmid) and Australia (Luke Plapp), and the Australian National Time Trial Championship (also the indefatigable Plapp).
“Summarising a season is always hard because it’s such a long journey over 10 months of racing,” said Matt White, the team’s Director of High Performance and Racing. “But one thing we can be very proud of this year is our young riders; we’ve had a lot of new guys step up this year and 12 different winners out of the 30 riders. 25 wins is the most victories we’ve had in five years, and they were spread out and […]
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