{"id":109640,"date":"2025-09-02T17:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T17:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/109640\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T17:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T17:32:09","slug":"how-breakthrough-tour-gave-him-belief-he-can-mix-it-with-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/109640\/","title":{"rendered":"how breakthrough Tour gave him belief he can mix it with best"},"content":{"rendered":"

With two kilometres left of the Col de la Loze, Jonas Vingegaard attacked out of the small group in an attempt to gap his great rival Tadej Pogacar in search of the Yellow Jersey at the Tour de France. The mountain was covered in a fine mist and spectators lined the road in rain ponchos as the race reached into the clouds. Vingegaard looked around to survey the damage but Pogacar was still on his wheel \u2014 and behind him was Oscar Onley from Kelso, southern Scotland.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven during that moment, I realised that this was pretty cool,\u201d Onley, 22, says. \u201cIt was one of the biggest climbs that we do in the Tour and the fact that it was just the three of us in the final two kilometres, it was quite special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Onley remained fixed to the wheels of the two best grand-tour riders in the world as they dragged him away from his nearest rival in the fight for third place, Germany\u2019s Florian Lipowitz, who had been dropped earlier in the climb.<\/p>\n

\"Three<\/p>\n

Onley was only 22 seconds off the podium going into stage 19, rubbing shoulders with Pogacar and Vingegaard<\/p>\n

BERNARD PAPON\/POOL\/AFP\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t hear much on the radio,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I could hear every time there was someone getting dropped, and then when I realised that it was just the three of us \u2026 those two are the best in the world by quite a long way, so to be able to stay with them as long as I did, I was quite proud of that ride.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the 2025 Yellow Jersey seemed a foregone conclusion by the end of the Hautacam climb on stage 12, after Pogacar had extended his lead on Vingegaard to 3min 31sec, it was Onley and Lipowitz who offered some of the greatest jeopardy of the race.<\/p>\n

In July, Onley told The Times<\/a> that he wasn\u2019t going into the race thinking about a top-five finish, instead aiming for a stage win. But as he found himself naturally in a good position after the first week it seemed obvious to target the best general classification (GC) position possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was fully expecting to crack one day and lose some time, and the fact that I was expecting that meant I wasn\u2019t stressing when that would happen,\u201d he says. \u201cThe deeper we got into the race, I think the first real mountain day on Hautacam I could see a lot of guys struggling. Coming to the end of the second week I realised that I probably had the level to compete for a top-five [finish in the GC].\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Picnic\u2013PostNL rider couldn\u2019t quite move up to third place after that day on the Col de la Loze, when he closed the gap to Lipowitz to only 22 seconds. And in the final stages, the 24-year-old German managed to pull away again. Scotland\u2019s Onley had to settle for fourth overall but he had arrived on the grand-tour stage.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole Tour gave me a lot of motivation for the future because going in I also questioned whether I could actually ride GC for three weeks,\u201d Onley says. \u201cSo it gave me a lot of confirmation and more of a clear idea of what I need to do.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Onley is taking on this year\u2019s Tour of Britain, in which he finished second last year<\/p>\n

SHUTTERSTOCK EDITORIAL<\/p>\n

\u201cNow I need to focus on going for GC and the Tour, the Giro d\u2019Italia and La Vuelta. Before I always said I\u2019d like to go for those goals but I didn\u2019t know if they were realistic. Now we can look at the coming seasons and try to focus almost the whole year around these races.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Tour de France takes more than just physical strength and endurance \u2014 it takes mental fortitude too. At the end of three attritional weeks, Pogacar was victorious once more but cast a tired figure. \u201cI\u2019m already counting the years until retirement,\u201d he said afterwards. \u201cThis year was something on another level. There was maybe one day that we went a bit easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is something Onley understands, saying the focus required for a grand tour, and particularly at the pointy end, drains a lot from a rider.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely hard mentally,\u201d he says. \u201cI remember after the first stage it was really hectic with the crosswinds. Physically it wasn\u2019t that hard a day but I was lying on my bed after and my head was just spinning. I hadn\u2019t felt like I had concentrated that hard for a long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs you go deeper into the race when you\u2019re still riding for GC, the days I found the hardest were the days where you didn\u2019t have a chance to win or it was a breakaway up the road but you still had to focus and be in position and make sure you didn\u2019t lose any time. You could only lose in that position, you were never going to win anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the Tour, Onley went to race the Cl\u00e1sica de San Sebasti\u00e1n, where he finished 13th before taking a week off the bike. Then the training began again before the Tour of Britain, which started on Tuesday in Woodbridge, Suffolk.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really nice to race again in the UK,\u201d he says. \u201cI haven\u2019t done it so much since coming out of juniors. I\u2019ve done the Tour of Britain twice now, this will be the third time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year Onley finished second in the race, which started in his home town. This time he\u2019s arriving at the startline as a new star of British riding \u2014 the 22-year-old who stuck with Vingegaard and Pogacar on the queen stage of the Tour de France. So what next?<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to look at what the options are and a lot of it depends on the course,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019d like to go back to the Tour and really focus on that again. There\u2019s no guarantee you\u2019re going to get fourth or top five again but it gives you more motivation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With two kilometres left of the Col de la Loze, Jonas Vingegaard attacked out of the small group…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109641,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-109640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}