At this year's Tour de France, only eight riders of the 184 rolling out to start the race in Lille were younger than Picnic PostNL's British racer Oscar Onley, but few of the other Tour youngsters can boast a start as impressive as the 22-year-old, who hails from Kelso in Scotland.
Racing his second Tour following a strong debut which saw him make four breakaways last July, Onley has already bettered his top finish from last year's race, where he took fifth on the mountainous stage 17 to Superdévoluy.
Stage 4's hilly test in Rouen saw him racing among the elite and finishing among the front group of six in fourth place, with only the superstar names of Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, and Jonas Vingegaard ahead of him at the finish line.
He and fellow 22-year-old Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ), who finished fifth in Rouen, have shone on each of the hilly days contested during this opening week of the Tour. The pair are shining brightly as part of cycling's up-and-coming generation.
Speaking after the stage, an excited Onley had to hold back from saying what he really thought.
"If you ask me how I'm feeling right now, the answer is probably something that can't be published," he said. "Before the stage, we made the plan to position me going into those final climbs. The guys did a great job at that, with Warren Barguil really bringing me forward onto that last steep one."
Onley had fought back to the front after getting caught up in a crash with just over 20km to race. He, along with everyone else, was dropped by the accelerations from Pogačar and Vingegaard on the Rampe Saint-Hilaire before making it across with several other chasers and then finding himself sprinting for a top placing at the line.
"I really went to the limit on that last climb," he said. "We knew that you had to be in second wheel or so around that last corner, but the final kilometre was really on legs, and that's all I had in the end.
"When you have guys like Matteo Jorgensen and João Almeida to close the gaps, and when it's flat and fast like that, I was never going to be able to stay away in the end if I attacked. I was really on the limit. It doesn't get much bigger than this in terms of races and competitors, so it's nice to be able to prove to myself that I can be there right at the top."
Picnic PostNL coach Matt Winston said that the team has been "slowly building towards this" with their young leader, with Onley having been part of the setup since joining the development squad in 2021.
He turned pro in 2023 and broke through with a stage win on Willunga Hill at last year's Tour Down Under. Second places at the Tour of Britain and Tour of Guangxi followed, while this year he has top-10 finishes at the Tour Down Under, UAE Tour and Itzulia Basque Country to his name. Last month, he showed his Tour form with a third place at the Tour de Suisse, which included outpacing Almeida to a mountain stage victory.
"If you look back at his results over the past 18 months, his results have been consistent in the one-week races, so we knew we were making steps and we continue to do so," Winston said.
"For us, the plan doesn't change now, and we will keep focusing on stages here at the race and see how far we can come there, and if we keep this up, then we can be in the fight for more top day results throughout the race."
Onley is flying through four days at the Tour, holding seventh overall at 55 seconds down on yellow jersey Van der Poel and race favourite Pogačar
There's still a long way to go for Picnic PostNL's budding new GC hopeful, but the team isn't putting pressure on him this month, their coach Pim Ligthart told WielerFlits on Wednesday morning.
"You can see he came out of [the Tour de Suisse] well. He's doing incredibly well here, one of our talents who is doing very well," the Dutchman said.
"He lost some time on the first day because he wasn't in the front echelon. But, as Matt said, we're taking it one day at a time. We're not putting pressure on him for a GC position.
"If the classification comes, then it will come. He's allowed to lose time. He's still young and he's going to have a bad day, but so far, it's been going really well."
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