There was a lot of attention on Jonas Vingegaard last week, as the Tour de France champion won the 11th and 12th races of his career, stages of the CRO Race, his first wins since his golden July.
Unlike at the Tour, though, it was not Tadej Pogačar pushing him all the way, but an even younger adversary, 19-year-old Oscar Onley of DSM, the latest British talent to burst onto the professional cycling scene.
The rider from Kelso finished second behind Vingegaard on his two stage wins, and ended finishing ten seconds behind him overall in third, thanks to bonus seconds more than anything else, as Matej Mohorič pipped the pair of them to victory in Croatia.
At the time, Onley did not even realise how big a deal it would turn out to be, he just saw a yellow jersey – a Jumbo-Visma issued one this time – and wanted to beat him.
“I didn’t realise how big it wasn’t until I went to my phone after that first time I got second,” he explains to Cycling Weekly, the day after the race ended. “Then I realised that yeah, it was quite a big deal. In the moment it’s just another bike race and another rider, you don’t really click who it is, and what kind of race it is until afterwards, I guess.
“It was a bit surreal to be to be racing against him [Vingegaard], and especially the last couple of days make when in the team meeting making a plan against Jonas, thank you go. Yeah, it’s a bit different to the races have been doing so far.”
The third place overall marks his best general classification finish of his nascent career, but it fits naturally in a year where he has continued to impress as a young rider, and make a bit of a name for himself among WorldTour professionals like Vingegaard and Mohorič, too.
“I wanted some results from this race, this week,” Onley says. “I didn’t know how well the parcours would suit me. Normally, I prefer a bit harder, longer climbs. So I wasn’t sure how well I could go this week. But in the end, I think I could show myself quite well, on the courses that suited me.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
However, despite sharing the podium with two of the riders of the year – do not forget Mohorič’s impressive win at Milan-San Remo earlier this year – Onley or his team are not getting carried away. This is his second year of three with DSM’s development squad, a programme that has brought through riders like Marc Hirschi, Nils Eekhoff and Leo Hayter before him, and he is sticking with his programme.
Being on a development team linked to a WorldTour squad…