While there\u2019s never been any doubt that Oscar Onley is a huge talent, his performances during the eight-day Tour de Suisse have underlined the ability of the 22-year-old Scot. One of the GC leaders who was caught out when a large break gained three minutes on day one, Onley clawed his way steadily back into contention, taking podium finishes on no fewer than five of the last six stages, which included the biggest success of his career on day five, when he outsprinted Jo\u00e3o Almeida at the Santa Maria summit finish.<\/p>\n
The Picnic PostNL rider\u2019s confidence was so high going into Sunday\u2019s final time trial on the fierce ramps of the Stockh\u00fctte climb above Lake Lucerne that he felt overall victory was within his reach. Ultimately, though, as UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader Almeida delivered another demonstration of why he started the race as favourite by winning the TT and the title, Onley was delighted to finish third on the day and overall.<\/p>\n
Speaking to CyclingProNet soon after finishing the time trial, the Scot said he had no regrets about his TT. \u201cI think I did quite big numbers so I\u2019ve got to be happy.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI tried to split it into two parts,” he continued. “The first was to where the intermediate was [at 4.5km], and it was really about trying to hold back in that first part. Then the second part would suit me quite well normally with the steep sections so I just tried to do what I could,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a really good week for me, a step up compared to my results in the past and also my own performances. I stepped up physically and I\u2019m happy with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
His duel with Almeida may have tipped the way of the very seasoned Portuguese in the end, but Onley has been saying all week that he\u2019s relished competing with one of the sport\u2019s best racers on current form. Yet, although his performances have lifted his sights, he says that he won\u2019t change his approach to the Tour de France, where he finished 39th overall on his debut last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe plan should still be to try to hunt for stages,\u201d said the Picnic PostNL leader. \u201cI think that\u2019s a good first step to learning the Tour, and I\u2019ve still got plenty of time to try for GC in the future. Probably, I\u2019ll start trying GC in the other Grand Tours first, because the Tour is another level up.\u201d<\/p>\n
For his Picnic team, too, Onley\u2019s rise is timely. Only a week ago they were bidding farewell to long-time leader Romain Bardet. But in Onley and English teammate Max Poole, who was 11th at the Giro last month, they now have two riders ready to pick the baton from the retired Frenchman.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While there\u2019s never been any doubt that Oscar Onley is a huge talent, his performances during the eight-day…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206291,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-206290","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"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114729654951531192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}