The World Championships in Glasgow isn’t the only notable thing that’s been happening in Scottish cycling this week.
At the Tour de Pologne, 20-year-old Scot Oscar Onley (Team DSM-Firmenich) has continued his promising full first season as a WorldTour rider, finishing tenth overall at the Tour de Pologne, a result that bodes more than well for his Grand Tour debut later this month at the Vuelta a España.
Fourth on stage 2, the toughest of the entire race and with a brutally difficult summit finish at Karpacz, then fifth on a second hilly stage 24 hours later, Onley was fifth overall before the crunch time trial in Katowice.
Racing against the clock on a flat, power rider’s course was by no means the strongest suit for a lightly-built climber like Onley, though, and he lost nearly a minute to stage winner Mattia Cattaneo (Soudal-QuickStep).
His final tenth place overall was nonetheless enough to secure Onley the Bjorg Lambrecht prize, awarded annually to the winner of the Tour de Pologne Best Young Rider competition in honour of the hugely talented Belgian rider who died in a crash in the race on August 5th, 2019.
“It’s nice for the confidence to do well here, the start of the season went pretty well, but then I had a little dip during the Dauphine,” Onley told Cyclingnews during the Tour de Pologne.
“I had had a lot of races and I was getting sick between them so I struggled there. So it’s nice to be back here and fighting for the wins.”
“This is a preparation race after coming back from altitude. So it’s full focus on the Vuelta after this.”
Onley will not ride the World Championships on home roads in Scotland, but there is a reason.
“It’s not a course that suited me that well. It’s a great event for Scotland to have, though, and I’m looking forward to watching it on TV when I’m back in Girona,” he told Cyclingnews.
It’s barely a year since Onley started racing regularly at professional level, winning a stage at the prestigious Giro Ciclistico Valle D'Aosta, but also finishing third in the CRO race behind 2023 Tour de Pologne winner Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) and Tour de France winner Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma).
In 2023 Onley has already won the best young rider competition at the Volta ao Algarve. Sixth in the Tour de Hongrie was another promising result, as was second overall in the 2.2-ranked stage race, the Alpes Isère, behind another young rider making a name for himself in Pologne, Belgium’s Lennert Van Eetvelt (Lotto-Dstny).
“My altitude camp was the first one I'd done, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this race,” Onley said.
"But on paper Pologne suits me quite well, so we came in with myself and Max [Poole, teammate] for GC. The idea was just to see how it went, although in principle this kind of course suits me a bit better than Max.”
Fourth on the stage 2 summit finish at Karpacz was Onley's first notable result in Pologne, and he followed that up with fifth on the stage 3 tough ascent to Duszniki-Zdroz.
“We had the plan that if any escape went then Max was to follow and I was just to sit on the wheels and save myself for the final kick,” Onley said about the stage 2 finish.
“Luckily we caught those two that went away [Majka and Van Eetvelt] before and then I went as hard as I could for the line, but it wasn’t quite enough to get a podium or a win.”
“I like it when climbs are a little bit harder, so someone like Mohoric is not there, because obviously if you bring him to the line he’s always going to beat you.”
As for his fifth place on the stage 3 shorter, steeper uphill kick, Onley said: “A lot of what you got out of there was to do with positioning. It was important to get into the right-hander at the bottom in as good a position as possible.”
“But then I made a little bit of a mistake. I hesitated a little bit before the top and that cost me a better result I think, because whatever position you were in, when you turned left at the top, that was the position you held to the finish.”
Onley will now prepare for the Vuelta a España, which he recognised will be “a big step up,” particularly as the longest race he’s done to date was the Dauphiné.
He is keeping that next step in his career in perspective, and he said he’ll apply the same strategy of learning as he goes along that’s worked so well to date.
“I guess it’ll be all about just learning from more experienced guys when I’m there, picking up small things, the same process as all these other races, but for three weeks instead of one week,” he said.
“I’ve looked a bit at the climbs, not so much yet, but there should be some stages that suit me, although it all depends on what the GC racers want to do. There is a really strong field there with Jumbo, Ineos and Soudal, but hopefully they’ll let some breaks go.”
