Move over track riders, there's a new cycling superstar on the scene

The Herald Scotland

6 days ago

It's meant that track riding has been, by some distance, the pre-eminent cycling discipline in this country, with it generally accepted that successful road riders hailed from overseas rather than Scottish shores. Road riders, and specifically Tour de France riders, were a foreign concept, in all senses of the phrase.
But this year, everything has changed.
For a number of seasons, Oscar Onley has been viewed as a very good young rider, with a heap of potential. In the first six months of 2025, he produced a several impressive results.
Over the past three weeks, however, he's transformed himself into a superstar.
It's impossible to overstate just how exceptional Onley's performance at this year's Tour de France, which ends today in Paris, has been.
His fourth place finish in the general classification (GC), having come within touching distance of a podium finish, has to be considered one of the truly great performances by a Scottish athlete this century.
This does, I realise, sound somewhat hyperbolic. But it's also true.
What Onley has achieved, and how he's performed over the 3300-or-so kilometres of this year's Tour, is phenomenal and given how difficult it is to excel in the GC of the Tour de France, has exceeded even the most optimistic of predictions as to how the Scot could do in this race. Despite his relative inexperience - this is only his second Tour de France - Onley has continued to produce the goods day after day and, astonishingly, the 22-year-old seemed to get stronger, better and more formidable with every passing stage.
Oscar Onley has made a real breakthrough in this year's Tour de France (Image: LOIC VENANCE/ Getty Images)
The mark of a truly great grand tour rider is to be able to ride like they don't have thousands of kilometres in their legs. It's an almost impossible feat. Yet Onley has managed it with apparent ease.
There's a few examples in the past three weeks that typify just how remarkable Onley's performance in this Tour has been.
The first came in week one, on Stage 7, when Onley, riding for Team Picnic PostNL, grabbed a spot on the podium behind no less than the two best riders (by some margin) of contemporary road racing, Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. For Onley's first Tour podium, he could not have been in more exalted company.
The second came on Stage 16.
The closing kilometres of the stage were up Mont Ventoux, which puts fear into even the most capable of riders.
Despite Onley making his Tour de France debut last year - he finished a creditable 39th in his maiden Tour - he'd never ridden up the iconic Mont Ventoux with it being omitted from the 2024 race. So I was, I admit, somewhat concerned as to how he'd cope with a climb that has broken some of cycling's greats.
There was, it turned out, nothing to worry about. Onley finished comfortably within the top 15 in the stage, less than two-and-half minutes down on the stage winner.
And the third example came on Stage 18, on Thursday.
On what's called the 'queen' stage, and which includes three epic climbs, Onley was outstanding.
Merely citing his fourth place finish in the stage fails to do justice to what was a remarkable ride.
With a kilometre to go, on Col de la Loz, Pogacar and Vingegaard decided they would try to close the gap on the leader, Ben O'Connor. Only one rider was able to go with Pogacar and Vingegaard, and that rider was Onley.
To see the Scot looking so completely at home alongside the two best road riders of this generation was truly a sight to behold.
These three individual stage performances may stand out but it's Onley's ride overall that's been most breathtaking.
His top-40 finish in the general classification standings in last year's Tour, as well as a number of impressive results since his Tour debut, certainly indicated that he had the potential to be a very good grand tour rider as he gained experience and matured but even he, when I spoke to him for Herald Sport ahead of this Tour, asserted he believed going for stage wins rather than a tilt at GC honours was a more realistic aim this year.
Whether he truly believed he wasn't ready for a GC push, or was just keeping expectations low, we'll never know. But however quietly confident he felt going into this year's Tour, it does seem that he's exceeded even his most lofty of aspirations.
(Image: Getty Images)
To put into context what Onley has achieved over the past three weeks, we must look at the history of Scots in the Tour de France.
A handful of Scottish men rode the Tour in the 1950s and 60s but it wasn't until the 1980s and Philippa York, who was known back then as Robert Millar, who really put road racing on the map in Scotland.
York was crowned King of the Mountains in 1984, as well as finishing fourth in the GC that year. She rode the Tour several more times in the 1980s and into the 90s but never matched that fourth-place finish. David Millar won four Tour stages between 2000 and 2012, but by the end of three weeks of racing, never troubled the GC standings.
And this year, Onley was joined by his compatriot, Sean Flynn, who also produced a creditable performance to finish well inside the top 150 in the GC.
So York's fourth-place finish in the Tour's GC standings, a whopping 41 years ago, was, until today, the single best-ever result by a Scot. For Onley to have matched this at the age of only 22, and in only his second Tour, is truly mind-boggling.
What the Kelso man has achieved over the past three weeks is not only a huge personal achievement, though, it also has far-reaching significance in terms of the impact it could potentially have on road racing in this country.
In the space of only three weeks, Onley has single-handedly reminded people in this country that track cycling is not the only discipline on two wheels in which Scots can be successful. I'm not going quite so far as to suggest this one result will create a boom in cycling in this country, but the value of having a successful grand tour rider, and particularly a successful Tour de France rider, cannot be underestimated.
It's not a given that Onley's career trajectory will be consistently upwards from here, but the early signs couldn't be more promising.
The fact that the 2027 [[Tour de France]] will visit Scotland - the Grand Depart begins in Edinburgh - is perfect timing for both Onley and for the sport in this country.
Only time will tell quite how effectively, and how quickly, Onley is able to build upon this year's Tour performance.
But before looking towards the future, we should just enjoy what was a truly astonishing, and history-making, Scottish sporting performance.