Oscar Onley in his new Ineos Grenadiers team kit, the team he will race for over the next two years after one of the most expensive contract buy-outs in pro cycling

Oscar Onley has said the gap between Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma | Lease a Bike) and everyone else is very significant when it comes to Grand Tour racing.

However, he believed he was improving very quickly and may set his sights on the Giro or Vuelta, rather than the Tour, as the next phase of his development.

Onley (23) has just left Picnic PostNL in a major contract buy-out move by Ineos Grenadiers, meaning the British World Tour is paying more for him than almost any other rider in the sport, between the buy-out free and his salary.

“To the front two, there is a big gap from the rest of us, but I definitely feel that, in the next couple of years, a podium finish is definitely possible if things go the right way for me,” Onley told BBC Scotland.

“And there’s also two other Grand Tours in Italy and Spain where sometimes the competition’s slightly less deep. If it goes the right way, then why can’t I try to win one of those?”

Onley in action during the 2024 Tour of Britain, climbing Saltburn Bank, when he rode for Team dsm-firmenich PostNL (Photo: Allan McKenzie-SWpix.com)

However, having finished 4th overall at the Tour last year, he said he felt he made very significant progress in 2025 and hoped that would accelerate now he was with Ineos Grenadiers.

“It really feels like it came quite quickly in the last few months before the Tour,” he said. “Everything started to click into place and so I was starting to gain a lot more confidence in myself as well.”

Coming just days after Ireland’s Ben Healy said doping controls had their limits in cycling and in other sports, Onley has echoed those views. However, the young Scot also believe very significant progress had been made in cycling over the past decade.

“I can’t speak for other sports, but I know how much we get tested and how much I personally get tested as well throughout the year and throughout the tour,” Onley said, adding had “a lot of trust” in the system that sought to keep the sport clean.

“I believe the sport’s come a long way in the past 10-15 years. I also don’t believe it’s completely clean. I think it’s quite naive to think it’s clean throughout the whole world, but I think it’s in a better place than it was before I started cycling.

“It’s not much I think about. I can only compete with who I am up against. I am not riding along thinking, ‘this guy might be getting an advantage over me’. It’s not really the thought process I or many other riders have.

“You have just got to focus on yourself and trust that everyone else is playing by the rule book. With the guidelines we have, I think it is very hard to cheat nowadays.”