After miraculous Tour, Onley sets sights fully on final goal: "That's also why I'm in Andorra now"

The 22-year-old Onley came to Lille without too many expectations. “When I entered the Tour, I wasn't focused on the GC, ” he says in the podcast hosted by Geraint Thomas and Luke Rowe. “I knew the first week would suit me very well. I could get results from the peloton, and I couldn't afford to lose time on the tough days.”

“When we got to the time trial, I was in a good position,” said the Scot, who was seventh at the time, 55 seconds behind Mathieu van der Poel in the yellow jersey. “I was told just to go full throttle and see where we ended up.” A solid time trial (23rd) saw him drop just outside the top 10, but two days later he was back in seventh place. “So it happened quite naturally that I slipped into the top 10.”

Once in the Pyrenees, the goal was simply to get as far as possible. "After the Tour de Suisse, things changed a bit, because I showed there that I was climbing pretty well," he explains about his ambitions in the general classification. “But we took it day by day. I had never done such long climbs before, especially not with riders of that level. I expected to crack completely, but I was still in good shape, so I wasn't too stressed about it. I figured I would get chances in the breakaway.”

That didn't happen. Onley kept hanging on with the leaders, even though he also had a few difficult days. In the first Alpine stage, to the Col de la Loze, it looked like it was all going wrong. “There were a few points in that stage where I thought the top 5, top 6 were slipping away from me, especially with Felix (Gall, ed.) in the breakaway. I had no teammates and was surrounded by three guys from Visma | Lease a Bike and three guys from UAE Team Emirates. Johannessen and I were there, and there was nothing we could do.”

After the Col de la Madeleine, the penultimate climb, he received good news from sports director Matt Winston. "He told me that the guys were coming back. I think he gave me time differences that were a little smaller than they were to encourage me. But when they came back, they pulled hard to get me back to the front of the race. On the final climb, the race unfolded differently." Frank van den Broek was one of Onley's most essential teammates in the Alps.

After the Tour, Onley rode the Clásica San Sebastián, where he finished 13th. It will be a while before he is back in action, but that is all with the World Cycling Championships in mind. “That's the big goal for the end of the season. That's also why I'm in Andorra right now, at about the same altitude as the race (in Rwanda, ed.). Hopefully, that will give me some advantages, because not everyone can do that right now. With good preparation, I can improve on last year.”

In Zurich, Switzerland, the youngster was able to keep up with the best for a long time. “That gave me a lot of confidence, because I hadn't done many one-day races yet. I was in the mix until the final lap, when the lights went out.” Now he hopes to do better as team leader, although he will have to share that status with Tom Pidcock. “This race also suits him very well. He will ride the Vuelta first. Is it at the limit for him? It's similar to Liège, but it also depends on how the ride goes.”