Just a few months ago, everything was pointing to the 2026 Tour de France being Oscar Onley’s Tour.
At last year’s race, Onley transformed his reputation from a talented young rider into a truly world class talent.
Indeed, it’s no overstatement to suggest that Onley’s 2025 Tour de France could, or even should, be considered one of the great Scottish sporting performances.
Fourth place overall, just 72 seconds off the podium, was the best general classification result by a Scottish rider in over four decades. Added to this, there were several occasions in which Onley wheel-to-wheel, entirely unfazed, with both eventual champion, Tadej Pogačar, and former champion, Jonas Vingegaard.
Witnessing a young Scottish rider perform in the manner in which he did, and with such an understated personality to accompany his monumental efforts on the bike, it was easy to see why observers began talking about Onley as being British road racing’s “next big thing”.
Of course, Britain producing world class road riders is no longer extraordinary.
First it was Bradley Wiggins, then Chris Froome and then, latterly, Geraint Thomas who have won the Tour de France since 2012. Over the past decade-and-a-half, Britain has gone from less than nothing, in road racing terms, to one of the major players in terms of producing Grand Tour contenders (and winners).
Almost all of this transformation in Britain’s road racing fortunes was down to Team Sky, which then became Team Ineos and which is now known as Netcompany Ineos.
When Netcompany Ineos came calling for Onley late last year, it came as little surprise that the Kelso man chose to part company with his former team and the outfit that turned him into a Tour contender, Team Picnic–PostNL. That the contract offered by Netcompany Ineos was reportedly worth in the region of €7-8 million would, one would imagine, have helped the Scot’s decision-making process, too.
Onley was announced as a Netcompany Ineos rider just days before last Christmas. And it was this switch of team, to one of the biggest in the peloton, that made it easy to assume that the 2026 Tour de France could be the year in which Onley pushed his way onto the podium and, in the process, record one of Scotland’s truly great sporting results.
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But Onley’s debut season with Ineos began shakily. A combination of crashes, illness and injury ensured Onley, who upon signing, was touted as one of Netcompany Ineos’ primary general classification riders, was unable to record many results of note.
And things got worse - significantly worse - with a serious crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes last month. Whilst going at high speed, Onley disappeared down a ravine and only avoided very serious injury due to being caught by a tree branch and so was left dangling rather than tumbling the “dozens of metres” that he would have fallen had he not become lodged in the tree.
Onley wasn’t quite as lucky as initially thought, though, and after withdrawing from the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Onley last week, withdrew from this year’s Tour having suffered a “significant shoulder injury” as a result of his crash.
The magnitude of this blow cannot be overstated. The 2026 Tour de France began yesterday and over the next three weeks, it had been anticipated that Onley would be a significant contenders for a general classification podium place. And it had been predicted that, with the might of Netcompany Ineos behind him, a stage win or two could well be within his grasp, too.
Instead of battling it out in the Tour’s peloton this month, however, Onley will, instead, be watching the race unfold from home.
His withdrawal is, almost certainly, the sensible decision. Three weeks of racing the world’s best in the planet’s toughest bike race is hard enough when one is in peak condition but it's incalculably harder when not fully fit.
So, where does this leave Onley? The 23-year-old has already posted on social media of his disappointment about how, he feels, he’s “let everyone down” with his poor, in relative terms, start to his Netcompany Ineos career.
“Been a tough start to the season to be honest and hard not to feel like I’ve let a lot of people down after all the time and investment from everyone at Netcompany Ineos”, he wrote at the end of April.
It’s almost certain that those at the helm of Netcompany Ineos do not feel let down by Onley - everyone in elite sport is well aware of the fragility of form, and how easily it can be derailed. And Onley is far from the first young rider to fail to immediately back-up the potential they’ve shown the previous season.
So, the support and backing from Netcompany Ineos will, I am certain, remain as strong as ever despite this disappointing six months.
What will be more interesting to observe will be Onley’s reaction to his underwhelming 2026 season.
When he put pen to paper with Netcompany Ineos, it seemed everything he touched turned to gold. That he was being hyped-up in the way he was was entirely justified and was done exclusively as a result of the outrageously good showing he produced in 2025.
Now, though, the confidence he’d built up has been, at least in part, shattered and the wave of momentum he was riding has long since disappeared. Onley must kick-start his career from, nearly, a standing start. This isn’t always an easy thing to do.
That he has everything he will need, and more, at Netcompany Ineos, will help. But regaining lost confidence is easier said than done.
Onley has, this year, found out just how brutal elite sport can be. It’s almost like the sporting gods like to prove a point that, just when you think you’re untouchable, they’ll show you that you most certainly aren’t.
This is not to suggest that Onley’s confidence and form are irrecoverable - of course not. And a rider of the calibre of Onley is more than capable of rediscovering it, and quickly.
But getting back up off the floor is always considerably more tricky than maintaining where you are. And chances to succeed in a race as monumental as the Tour de France don’t come around every year.
The most significant downside of Onley’s omission from the Tour de France start list is, of course the fact the Scot does not have the opportunity to back-up his remarkable 2025 Tour. Onley will, justifiably, have believed he could achieve a truly historic result this summer. That will now have to wait. But his absence is also a significant loss for Scottish cycling and Scottish sport.
This country has produced a tiny number of men who have in contention for any kind of honour at the Tour never mind GC honours. Onley had the potential to do that this summer.
He’ll now have to wait at least 12 months to see if he can improve upon his fourth place last year. That wait will seem long to the Scottish public, but even longer to Onley himself.
Here’s to a speedy recovery to Onley because he truly has everything it takes to be a Scottish sporting legend and the sooner he’s able to fulfil that potential, the better.
