For 22-year-old Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL), stage 19 of the Tour de France started as a day where he had a lot to gain, possibly, but also almost nothing to lose. He was 22 seconds off moving onto the podium, and still not finding his limits in the mountains. Anything could happen.
At the end of the day, however, whilst he did not lose, he also did not win. Onley faded just towards the top of La Plagne, and a closable 22 seconds turned into a 1:03 gap to third-placed Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), who rode for his life to hold onto his spot on the podium.
And so on paper, the day ended as it had started, with Onley in fourth, sometimes thought of as the hardest place to finish, a top result yet not on the podium. But instead of disappointment about what was lost, or more accurately, not gained, Picnic PostNL are heading into the final days of this Tour with expectations exceeded.
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“If you came to the Tour de France and you said Oscar would finish in the top 10 of GC and then the top five, then we would have taken that,” Picnic DS Matt Winston said after stage 19.
“I think we can be super proud of his performance, but the whole team has stepped up around him over the last three weeks.”
A big part of that happiness is that, until Thursday, thoughts of finishing on the podium were not even in the team’s mind, so it’s far from feeling like a three-week-long hope has been dashed.
“Even up until yesterday, we were not even thinking about a podium position. Obviously, after yesterday, where we took a bit of time, then you start thinking ‘hmm, maybe it’s possible’. But it was only yesterday that we really started to think about that,” Winston said.
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“So we’ve just been taking it step by step. I think Oscar did a really a good ride today, and showed again that he can climb consistently that he can climb with the best guys in the world, which before the race was unknown, so we take a lot from that.”
In fact, even fourth is well above what the team were aiming at in this race, where they thought GC would be secondary to hunting stages, with Onley thinking until at least the middle of the race that at some point he would reach his limit, and readjust to stage hunting.
Instead, the adjustment was that Onley had to ride hard every day, instead of having any off-days to save energy.
“We came here for day results, where you go all in one day and then maybe in the gruppetto for three days after that and then go all in again,” Winston said. “Whereas we did a good first week and then found ourselves in the GC, so Oscar has gone full all day every day. There’s not really been an easy day in this Tour de France, and I think there, the fact that he’s still fifth on the stage today is remarkable.”
Indeed, coming into this race without a great expectation on the overall – Winston spoke of a “relaxed GC” – was perhaps what helped Onley to achieve what he has these last three weeks.
“He’s 22 years old, you know? We don’t want all that pressure on him at this age where the weight of the world is on his shoulders, and I think we’ve approached it in the right way, and that’s probably why we’re in the position we’re in.”
With two stages still remaining, which aren’t entirely straightforward, there is still an outside chance that things could change, but for Picnic, there’s not going to be some last-ditch attempt to topple Lipowitz, and indeed, the only thing that could make their Tour better would be to take that hunted-for stage win.
“It will be interesting to see what happens in Paris, with, I think, maybe a forecast for rain. You don’t want incidents in Paris where someone loses a podium spot because the cobbles are wet and there’s incidents,” Winston said.
“So we’ll just continue to race our race, we came for day results, that’s what we set out from the start, we have two chances for day results still to come, and we’ll approach them in that way.”
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