It’s been a steady progression by Onley since the London-born cyclist joined the Netherlands-based team, Team Picnic\u2013PostNL, in 2023.<\/p>\n
His first individual professional win came the following January in an uphill finish on stage five of the 2024 Tour Down Under, ultimately finishing fourth overall.<\/p>\n
Onley, though, came into that year’s Tour de France “just trying to go for stage results, which meant there is certain days when I would sit up and take it a bit easier”.<\/p>\n
That was with the knowledge that he was not in a position “to be fighting for a top-five finish overall”. <\/p>\n
That all changed last year.<\/p>\n
“It really feels like it came quite quickly in the last few months before the Tour,” he said. <\/p>\n
“Everything started to click into place and so I was starting to gain a lot more confidence in myself as well.”<\/p>\n
While he was initially targeting stage wins in his second Tour de France, with the general classification being a secondary aim, it soon became clear that a podium finish was a possibility.<\/p>\n
Onley would finish just over a minute behind third-placed Florian Lipowitz of Germany. Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard was eight minutes in front in second, while winner, Tadej Pogacar of Slovenia, was 12 minutes better off.<\/p>\n
“I still feel very far away,” the Scot said as he looked forward to the coming season. “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.<\/p>\n
“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?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s been a steady progression by Onley since the London-born cyclist joined the Netherlands-based team, Team Picnic\u2013PostNL, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-407669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}