Jayco AlUla heads to Tour de France with all-round squad: O’Connor and Groenewegen present

Eddie Dunbar and Luke Plapp will debut at the Tour de France as O'Connor's main lieutenants, while Elmar Reinders, Luka Mezgec, and Luke Durbridge will form the train for Groenewegen. Mauro Schmid, who extended his Swiss title on Sunday, will also be part of the team. He will get his chances in the middle mountains, the team has announced.

“We’re really looking forward to getting on the road at the Tour de France with Dylan Groenewegen for the sprints and we’ve got Ben O’Connor for GC. We’ll have the national time trial champion and road race champion, Luke Plapp and Luke Durbridge, as Australians in the team, along with Ben, who is the first Australian GC leader for the team,” said sports director Matthew Hayman.

“The opening stage is a sprint stage and for a sprinter to be able to take the yellow jersey at the Tour de France, I’m sure that excites Dylan, and it would be a pretty crowning moment to take a win and the yellow jersey,” Hayman explains. "Then, it’s a really challenging first 10 days. There’s quite a lot of punchy, classics-style stages and we’ve got a time trial in there before we move into the mountains.

“Overall, we’ve identified probably five or six stages that are too hard for the sprinters that could be potential breakaway or punchy days, then a couple of time trials, a flat one first and then a mountain time trial, and then some big mountain stages.. It’ll be a stressful first 10 days for the riders and myself, particularly around the GC,” the Aussie knows. "We’ve seen in the past that the Tour de France is always stressful, it’s the biggest race and the riders become nervous. There’s always the potential for time gaps for the GC guys. You never know what’s going to happen in the Tour de France from day to day."

O'Connor is, therefore, aiming for a good GC. “We have a really versatile team and I’ve performed well in Grand Tours in the past so I’ll do everything I can to get back to the top five,” he says, expressing his ambition. “I've been able to finish in at the Giro d’Italia, Vuelta a España, and Tour de France.”

“The route is a race of two halves,” O'Connor analyzes. "You have northern France with some extremely punchy stages and then pretty much, from stage 10 onwards, all of climbs are 30 minutes to one hour long. There are some really big cols and passes, so I think that’s where I will be enjoying the race a lot more. They’re the kind of mountain stages I really prefer. For me, it’ll be about getting through the first half and then executing in the second half."

Dylan Groenewegen
Elmar Reinders
Ben O'Connor
Luke Plapp
Luke Durbridge
Mauro Schmid
Eddie Dunbar
Luka Mezgec