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Ben O’Connor (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) took his group’s first win of the 2024 season with a solo journey to the road on the Vuelta a Murcia.
He took benefit of the French squad’s energy in numbers on the head of the 199km race, proving the strongest from the lead group and dropping Tim Wellens (UAE Staff Emirates) on the ultimate climb of the day.
Out entrance, it was the Australian who pushed his benefit on the descent and remaining flat run to the road in Murcia. Additional again, Jan Tratnik (Visma-Lease A Bike) labored his approach throughout to Wellens, becoming a member of the Belgian 3km out earlier than beating him within the race for second on the end.
“I am very glad, there isn’t any higher solution to begin the season than with a win,” O’Connor mentioned after the race. “It is good to see that the winter work is paid off. I all the time wished to be aggressive in the present day on the climb in the midst of the race. I wished to take a chance.
“It was tremendous windy as nicely afterwards so it made for a extremely laborious day and I used to be really actually glad that we had Paul Lapeira and Nico Prodhomme with me within the breakaway up entrance of the race. I believe we really did a good job to avoid the peloton.
“I took a second with Tim Wellens to leap away as a result of we began to lose some cooperation. So yeah, I assume ultimately the story reveals I acquired away on the ultimate climb and on the race and could not be happier. Now I simply need to hope to proceed this type of type and race to my coronary heart, race to my head as nicely and do my greatest.”
O’Connor, Tratnik and Wellens had been amongst an elite group which broke away from the peloton on the main mid-race climb of the Alto Collado Bermejo. Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease A Bike), Dani Martínez (Bora-Hansgrohe), Nicolas Prodhomme (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Jefferson Cepeda (Caja Rural-Seguros RGA) additionally made the transfer.
On the way in which down the opposite facet, the assault caught the breakaway survivors of Tosh Van der Sande (Visma-Lease a Bike), Arne Marit (Intermarché-Wanty), Thomas Gachignard (TotalEnergies), Paul Lapeira (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) and Mathias Norsgaard (Movistar), with the enlarged group having fun with a two-minute lead over the peloton heading into the ultimate 80km.
Groups together with Ineos Grenadiers and Groupama-FDJ led the chase behind however the leaders would prevail. Wellens and O’Connor made a transfer to go clear simply over 40km from the end as others fell again in the direction of the peloton.
They pushed their benefit on the highway to the ultimate problem of the day, the Alto Cresta del Gallo some 12km out. It was there that O’Connor made his profitable transfer, accelerating to go away Wellens behind as he struck out for the end alone.
Additional again, assaults got here from Michał Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers) and Jan Tratnik, with the Slovenian proving the strongest man within the chase to work his approach throughout to Wellens late on and safe second within the last, 42 seconds after O’Connor had raced to victory.
Outcomes
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