Onley did the exact opposite of what team manager Thomas said on Vuelta stage 6: ‘So I was useless'

Enric Mas surprised everyone by catching up to Tadej Pogacar on the final climb of the sixth stage of the Vuelta a España, but Oscar Onley would have loved to have been in his place. The Brit gave it a shot on the final climb, but pushed too hard and paid a very heavy price for it. The Netcompany INEOS team leader lost a lot of time and nearly lost the white jersey as well.

Tadej Pogacar launched his expected attack on the final climb when things really got tough. And who did we see on his wheel? That’s right, Onley. At first, the Brit was the only one who could keep up. When a few other riders caught up, the red jersey wearer kicked it up another notch. Once again, it was the white jersey wearer who hung on the longest, but when he dropped back, he was swept back toward his rivals for the podium.

After that, he really struggled. He also had to drop back from that group and crossed the summit well behind. On the descent and on the flat, he only lost more time. “It was really tough,” he told the official Vuelta media afterward. “The gravel section went on longer than I thought. I might have pushed myself a bit too hard there, and I think I paid the price for that on the way to the summit.”

It’s all the more painful that his team leader, Geraint Thomas, explained after the stage in Andorra why Pogacar wasn’t marked at the time. “You’re not going to mark him if, with 50 kilometers to go, he’s riding at seven watts per kilogram,” the Welshman explained on the podcast *Watts Occurring*. “That’s just not possible.” Onley was one of the strongest riders behind the Slovenian at the time, but on Thursday he actually lost a lot of ground.

At the summit, the gap was already fifty seconds. “After that, I descended at my own pace. To be honest, I didn’t want to be alone on the headwind stretch toward the finish, so when I saw the group with Mattias Skjelmose and Sepp Kuss coming toward me, I was actually quite relieved. I tried to keep up with them, but I got a cramp. So I was useless.”

As a result, Onley crossed the finish line in twelfth place, 1.38 minutes behind Pogacar and 52 seconds behind a group that included Felix Gall (Decathlon CMA CGM) and Primoz Roglic (Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe). Also in that group: Ramses Debruyne (Alpecin-Premier Tech). He finished third after spending the day in the breakaway and has closed the gap on Onley to just three seconds in the young rider classification.

"I'm not surprised; Ramses Debruyne is a strong rider," Onley says of his Belgian rival. "But there are still two weeks to go, so I don’t think it will come down to three seconds in the end. I think we’re about the same age. I remember racing against him as a junior, and we were in the breakaway together in the Dauphiné. I think he finished second back then. I know he’s a strong rider, and the way he rode today was impressive."