“Handling his bike, he could… well, he actually just really couldn’t”; Oscar Onley (Picnic PostNL) climbed the cycling ladder to the top of the Tour in just 4 years

It was almost as an aside that debutant Tim Naberman mentioned it during Picnic PostNL’s pre-Tour press moment. “A few years ago, I was racing with Oscar in the Tour de Bretagne for the development team, and back then he still had to learn everything, but now it’s really cool to see him ride like he did in Switzerland.”

Seeing Onley’s eagerness in the hectic punch stages of the Tour de France, our thoughts went back to Naberman’s words, which we looked up again after his time trial for some context. “Oscar joined the team back then as a super talent with insane power numbers, but handling his bike, he could… well, actually he just really couldn’t,” said Naberman.

In that 2021 Tour de Bretagne, a certain Jean-Louis Le Ny won, while Onley finished anonymously in 68th place. “Oscar came from Great Britain, and you could see that racing there is mostly straight lines. And if there was a corner, it was one where you really had to brake. If you don’t race in Europe, it’s very different. We had to teach him from start to finish how to race in Europe.”

As a Dutchman, Naberman could explain that well to his young British teammate. “For me it was the opposite: my power numbers are a bit lower, but my technique was better. I knew I could make up for it in the corners. When you’re riding with a teammate who is exactly the other way around, that does cause some friction.”

“It’s great to see how someone who started out like that is now competing with the world’s best,” Naberman said proudly. “That shows that raw talents exist and need to be developed. His progress doesn’t really surprise us, because we immediately saw that Oscar was truly a racer. We knew there was a lot to gain, but it just needed time.”

“Now you see that he’s just competing with the best in the world, and we also see that he can hold his own,” says Naberman, hitting the nail on the head. Because the stages the peloton faced in recent days were no joke. And in both stage two to Boulogne-Sur-Mer and stage four to Rouen, Onley threw himself right into the mix.

“We said that too!” Naberman adds. “He even said: it’s kind of like the Tour de Bretagne here. Hectic, left, right, up, down.” And he still has days coming up that suit him, because on Friday the Tour caravan heads towards the Mur de Bretagne in the province of the same name. “For guys like Oscar, those races have been really important, because that’s where he learned how to do it and secretly stole moves from others. And it’s about overcoming your fears, because every rider has healthy nerves, for example when descending.”

Onley seems like an extremely calm guy to outsiders, and Naberman confirms that’s also the case internally. “Oscar is very calm, he’s always been like that. But he knows exactly what he wants. He’s not really a typical team leader either, more of a quiet leader. He’s now proving himself for the first time at the highest level, and that’s an adjustment for us too, because we want to support him as best as we can. For Picnic PostNL, it’s super cool to be able to race with him like this,” concludes the Tour debutant.