When Oscar Onley strains up for his Tour de France debut on Saturday, he’ll accomplish that with plates and pins holding his collarbone collectively.
It is a bone that cyclists know properly, a standard fracture among the many bunch, however dsm-firmenich PostNL’s younger Scot is aware of it higher than anybody. In an eight-month interval this previous yr, Onley suffered three crashes, every of them leaving him with a damaged collarbone.
When he obtained his race calendar in December, one race stood out: the Tour. “I knew that, if issues went in keeping with plan, then I might be right here,” Onley tells Biking Weekly, poolside at his group lodge. Issues, after all, didn’t go in keeping with plan.
After abandoning the Vuelta a España, his first Grand Tour, with a damaged collarbone on stage two final August, the 21-year-old repeated the harm twice, first at January’s Cadel Evans Nice Ocean Street Race, after which once more on the Amstel Gold Race in April, two months earlier than the Tour.
“It has been a little bit of an up and down season, however I do know roughly how lengthy it takes to return again from every harm, so I wasn’t too pressured concerning the type or coming again in time,” he says.
“I believe the newest [collarbone break] was the quickest. I believe I had three days off the bike, after which acquired on the coach for a few days. I used to be on the street throughout the week.”
Onley pulls down the neck of his t-shirt to disclose a grisly, pink scar on his left collarbone, adorned by dashes left from the stitches. He exhibits the identical on his proper facet, barely smaller in measurement. Every restoration, he says, was simpler than the final. “Now I am fairly used to it,” he smiles.
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Onley, third from proper, on the group presentation in Florence on Thursday
(Picture credit score: Getty Pictures)
Though this yr’s Tour will mark Onley’s debut, it will not be the dsm-firmenich PostNL rider first time on the race. “I went in 2013,” he says. “We have been on a household vacation, and the TT began close by, so we acquired to go round all of the groups and watch the riders warming up.”
His earliest biking reminiscence got here three years earlier than, watching Alberto Contador and Andy Schleck change blows on the Tourmalet on the Tour. “From there, Andy Schleck was sort of the primary idol, I assume, that I needed to be like rising up,” Onley says.
“I believe should you went again and checked out my outcomes as a youth and a junior, nothing actually stood out,” he provides. “I had some OK outcomes, I used to be fairly constant, however I used to be by no means profitable the large races, or profitable many races, actually. It was fairly a little bit of a big gamble that the group signed me onto the devo group in 2021.”
The gamble paid off, and earlier than lengthy, Onley was tussling with a Tour winner himself. Racing with DSM on the 2022 CRO Race, simply 19 years outdated, the Scot went toe-to-toe with Jonas Vingegaard, pushing the latest yellow jersey winner to his limits.
“From there, lots of people had expectations on me, and numerous them have been fairly unrealistic going into my first season as a professional,” he says, “however myself and my group knew my degree. We did not attempt to go for issues that have been unrealistic.
“Simply because I used to be near [Vingegaard] there did not imply I used to be going to be near him within the Tour the next yr. It is fairly a giant distinction between the races, however clearly racing in opposition to a reputation like that provides you numerous confidence as properly.”
Onley must wait one other 15 months earlier than his breakthrough win got here, when he surged away on Willunga Hill on the Tour Down Beneath, claiming the stage and his first skilled victory.
Now, he is hoping to repeat the feat on the most important platform of all of them. “It is like a childhood dream [being here],” he says of the Tour. “Every little thing’s simply 5 instances as huge [as other races I’ve done], I might say.
“My private, and the group’s, aim is to attempt to get a stage win,” he says. “I can say that I am coming for expertise, however you may as well get expertise attempting to go for the win. I will be on the lookout for breaks all through the three weeks, and hopefully I’ve acquired the legs to at the very least be up there and present my face on the levels that go well with me.” He has already earmarked stage two into Bologna – “It is fairly a great one for me.”
Afterwards, the intention is to “hold trending upwards,” Onley provides. No extra collarbone breaks, only a clean trajectory to fulfilling his potential.
“Hopefully, subsequent yr, I will be at a degree the place I can begin to intention for GC in a Grand Tour,” the 21-year-old says, however he will not be drawn on naming a single ambition. “I simply should see the place I am at,” he says. “I may say I wish to win the Tour, however I do not know simply now if that is cheap or not. I’ve to see when the time’s proper.”
