'Over my limit' but Onley continues to impress after fifth place at Hautacam

Oscar Onley cut an exhausted figure in his post-race interview on Thursday. Still dripping with sweat and water, poured over his head to cool him after a huge effort in searing heat, he spoke between huge gasps of air, trying to regain some kind of equilibrium after one of the toughest days in the saddle.

“Tired,” came the Picnic-PostNL rider’s response when asked how it felt to have beaten some of the world’s best cyclists to finish fifth on stage 12 of his second Tour de France. “It was a hard day, I felt good, maybe I just went over my limit halfway up,” he breathed.

Onley had seemed relatively comfortable on the Col du Soulor, riding with a GC group which had grown ever-smaller, some of those big names, the best cyclists in the world, slipping behind the young Scot and Visma | Lease a Bike ground up the day’s first brutal test.

“I was quite surprised on the first climb when I saw Remco [Evenepoel, Soudal-Quickstep] and Jorgenson [Matteo, Visma | Lease a Bike] getting dropped, I guess they probably suffered in the heat. There’s a long way to Paris still, they’re certainly not out of it.”

We’ve become used to young men producing performances we once thought were reserved for the more mature, just look at Thursday’s stage winner, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG). When he won his first Tour de France, he was younger than Onley is now, though only by a few months. But Pogačar is extraordinary, and while Onley might be closer to normal, Thursday’s ride to Hautacam was truly remarkable. 

As the race reached the bottom of Hautacam, the young Scottish rider was perfectly placed in a GC group which had expanded on the descent before. That group exploded when Pogačar launched the race-winning move, but Onley found himself in a third group on the road, in good company, alongside Tobias Halland Johannessen (Uno-X Mobility) and the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe duo of Florian Lipowitz and four-time grand tour winner, Primož Roglič. Exactly the group he was hoping to be with at this part of the race.

When Lipowitz attacked, he went with him, though when the young German went again, he was unable to hold on. Eventually, he finished fifth, on the same time as Johannessen after dropping back to the Norwegian. Roglič? Nowhere to be seen.

“It’s difficult when there’s team mates there and I just had to try and get rid of at least one of them if I could.”

In his third year on the World Tour, after a couple of years at Picnic-PostNL’s development team, 2025 has been a breakthrough year for Onley, perhaps not in terms of victories, but certainly in terms of results, which have consistently reflected his ability to be with the best at key moments. 

This is especially so in stage races. This year he’s ridden five WorldTour stage races and only finished outside the top 10 once, at the Tour de Romandie. At last month’s Tour de Suisse, he out-sprinted João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) on a steep final to take his second career win, both of which have been in WorldTour stage races.

Now, after 12 stages of the world’s biggest bike race, he sits sixth overall, way behind Pogačar, but close enough to others to be eyeing a move up the GC. First, though, comes the stage 13 mountain time trial and the brutal ascent to Peyragudes.

“If I can recover well, then I’ll give it a good shot tomorrow,” Onley concluded.