Tour de France: Oscar Onley eyes a podium finish ‘in the next two years’

It has been steady progress by Onley since the London-born cyclist joined the Dutch team, Team Picnic – PostNL, in 2023.

His first professional singles win came the following January in a grueling finish on stage five of the 2024 Tour Down Under, and he ultimately finished fourth.

Despite this, Onley entered the Tour de France that year “just trying to get stage results, which means there are certain days where I will sit down and take it a little easier.”

This was with the knowledge that he was not in a position to “compete for a top five overall”.

That all changed last year.

“It seems to have come very quickly in the last few months leading up to the tour,” he said.

“Everything started to fall into place and so I started to gain more confidence in myself as well.”

While he initially targeted a win on the second stage of the Tour de France, with the general classification a secondary goal, it soon became clear that a podium finish was possible.

Onley finished just over a minute behind third-placed German Florian Liebowitz. Denmark’s Jonas Vingegaard led by eight minutes in second place, while winner Tadej Pogacar from Slovenia was 12 minutes better.

“I still feel so far away,” the Scot said as he looked ahead to next season. “For the leaders, there’s a big gap to the rest of us, but I definitely feel like in the next couple of years, it’s definitely possible to get on the podium if things go in the right direction for me.

“There are also two other big rounds in Italy and Spain where sometimes the competition is a little shallower. If things go in the right direction, why shouldn’t I try to win one of those?”