Picnic-PostNL's Oscar Onley could hardly speak when he finished stage 19 of the Tour de France. He struggled to answer questions, struggled to even drink his cherry juice, and clearly didn't fully appreciate what he'd achieved with his ride.
That was to move into within just 22 seconds of finishing on the podium, after he and his team put in a huge ride to come back after being dropped on the Col de la Madeleine, and then rubbing shoulders with Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike).
Given the effort Onley had put in to come back after being distanced, and then giving it all to finish fourth on stage 18 – the only person who could stick with the top two riders – it was no surprise that the 22-year-old was so empty at the top.
"Um, yeah, it was hard. It was… I don't even know," were the first words he attempted to string together to the media gathered round him at the finish. "Visma just set a hard pace and I just did what I could."
Instead of panicking or pushing forwards on his own, Picnic-PostNL's strategy for Onley was for him to wait for his teammates in the valley, who then helped pace him back up to the yellow jersey group.
"Oscar couldn't follow the moves on the Madeleine and had to pace himself a little bit there," team Sports Director Matt Winston explained.
"Unfortunately he was with quite some riders, but no one wanted to ride with him, so over the top and after the descent, we decided we'd wait in the valley for Warren [Barguil] and Frank [van den Broek] to come back to then bring him back to the peloton, which they did in a really good way and then were able to set him up for the final climb."
Perhaps not knowing exactly how much he had climbed up on GC, or maybe just feeling too much pain and exhaustion to be positive, Onley was not immediately celebratory of his performance.
"I wouldn't say I kept my cool," he said about managing to return after the Madeleine. "I still felt good, I'm just not at the level of those guys when they attack and it showed at the end that they went pretty hard up there."
However, not being on the level of Pogačar and Vingegaard is nothing to be ashamed of when those two riders are five minutes ahead of the rest of the pack. As drained as he might have felt at the top, Onley did take a huge step on GC on Thursday.
Partly due to his own impressive ride, and partly due to a hard day for third-placed Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe), Onley is now just 22 seconds down on the German rider. Closing that before the race is over would see him move into third and the white jersey.
Winston, having not just ridden a 25km monster climb in the cold, was able to give a more energetic reaction to the day than his exhausted rider.
"I'm really happy with how the boys performed today" he said. "I think [Onley] was really on top of his nutrition today and that kept him in really good light ready for that final climb. What a fantastic ride from him there on the final, finishing fourth on the stage and 25 seconds off the podium."
For Onley, there hadn't been much time to process the gaps or what had happened to his rivals, but he did acknowledge the fact that he is very close to what would be an enormous achievement to finish on the podium in Paris.
"Yeah, I don't know," the Scot said about the time gap. "That's not much so we'll give it everything tomorrow."
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