This article was first published in Issue 139 of our magazine

“There’s not so much happening in the Borders. For something like this to happen in the biggest bike race in the world, it gets a lot of attention.”

Just over four months have passed since Oscar Onley, the 23-year-old from the market town of Kelso in the Scottish Borders, finished in fourth place at the Tour de France. What he did in those 21 stages – which traversed the Massif Central, skirted the Jura Mountains, passed over the Pyrenees and through the Alps before concluding in Paris’s glittering twilight – confirmed Onley’s destiny as a bike rider.

He might always have been a known climbing talent to the keen-eyed watchers of professional cycling, but the Tour is the Tour, and getting a result there leads to something different. It means, as Onley tells me, being asked for selfies when out training in Spain, it means the phone of his press officer at Team Picnic-PostNL blowing up with interview requests. Importantly, it means learning how to keep your feet on the ground and work hard, despite a whole new world opening up in front of you.

“It’s something I find really strange,” says Onley. “When you go out for an ice cream at night in Andorra or Girona, you’re not expecting to take pictures. When I was at the Tour of Britain, I started to realise how much attention the Tour gets from the wider public.

“Within cycling, everyone knows how big the Tour is, but when you start to realise how many people know you from outside of that, you realise the gravity of the sporting event.”

This sort of sudden fame can change a man. For some, it might render them unrecognisable: over-confident, arrogant or dangerously self-assured. However it is clear that Onley, who grew up cycling on roads so slow the tarmac feels sticky in bleak, cold Scottish winters, is in no danger of losing his way.

“I’m still doing the same thing as I was before the Tour. Maybe I come in with a little bit more confidence now, which I think most people would tell me is a good thing, as I’m naturally someone who doesn’t have much confidence. It takes a lot of work for my teammates to really hype me up for a win, for example,” he says.

“I would say the main characteristics of people from where I’m from are that we’re willing to work hard. Some people want things, they’re demanding, I’m happy to go with whatever is happening. I think that’s natural coming from where I come from, we’re not big show people or anything. We’re down-to-earth people.”

When you step back and look at the arc of Onley’s life so far, he has, in many ways, been preparing for this year’s breakthrough result at the Tour de France for some time. The Scotsman was not a swashbuckling prodigy in the junior ranks who would sign a million-euro contract as an 18-year-old. His progress in the sport, like riding for the general classification in a three-week Grand Tour, has been steady and measured. In typically self-deprecating fashion, he admits he was “terrible” when he was first offered a contract on Development Team DSM after he left school, but the Dutch squad are known for spotting emerging talent – and riders with the mentality needed to stay calm and focused for three weeks when the world is watching.

In the four years he has spent as part of the Dutch team, Onley has transformed from an under-23 rider struggling to find his place in the peloton, to one of the biggest climbing talents of his generation. He has become a solid, reliable, level-headed stage racer whose maturity goes beyond his years.

“I think that ability to stay calm in races actually comes from the fact that I’m not that confident in myself and I don’t really believe what I’m doing is a big thing. Afterwards when people tell you that you were third on a Tour stage, or that you were following the top two guys in the world at that moment, I’d think it was crazy if it was someone else my age doing it,” says Onley.

“But when it’s happening to myself, I always downplay it a bit. That can be a strength, and it can be a weakness. The Tour is three weeks long and it is important to stay calm, so in that sense it becomes my strength.”

As he speaks, it starts to become clear that Onley doesn’t ride his bike for a living because he loves to win bike races. When he gets a good result – like his fourth place at the Tour de France or top-five finishes in one-week WorldTour stage races like Down Under, Suisse and the UAE this season – it is a fitting reward for his hard work. But that reward isn’t what draws Onley to this sport: he is passionate about the roads he travels on to get there.

“I just love riding my bike. To be honest, I probably enjoy the training more than the racing. My happiest time is going out for six hours and exploring new roads, really pushing yourself if you have efforts,” he explains. “I enjoy the process part of it. Being the kind of rider I am, a GC rider, I think it’s important to enjoy that because you spend a lot of weeks up the mountain with one or two other guys on altitude camps. It’s not so glamorous, but that’s what I enjoy.

“When I was younger, I did a lot of cross-country running, and I was a lot better at running than cycling. I got better results when I ran and I was pretty competitive, but I just enjoyed being out on the bike and training more than I did running, so that’s why I carried on with cycling instead of going for a run.”

Team Picnic-PostNL have not tried to change Onley’s nature with the aim of making him a better bike racer, but they have instead nurtured his personality and discovered what helps him perform his best. The 23-year-old flourishes in the hilly Ardennes Classics and can try to win stages from the breakaway, but fighting for a place on the overall podium of Grand Tours is where his heart lies, and 2025 saw his team fully empower him to do this.

“The approach I went into the Tour with last year was going for stages, which meant losing time on purpose. That wasn’t something I did for the rest of the year in shorter stage races, and I was used to riding for GC in them, so I struggled with it a bit when I had to change for the Tour. This year, I felt much more at home riding for GC at the Tour and going through that process, even though it’s a bigger mental stress, and it’s a bigger physical effort as well,” he says.

Despite his cool, unflappable demeanour, Onley is human and admits that there were occasions in the Tour when he thought the race could be unravelling in front of him. Paradoxically, it was the day when he got one of his most impressive results – fourth place on the Col de la Loze behind stage winner Ben O’Connor then Tadej Pogačar and Jonas Vingegaard – that the Scot remembers as the most stressful.

“The only time I panicked a little bit was actually on the stage when I had my best performance by the finish. It was on the Col du Madeleine [the penultimate climb of the day] when Pogačar and Vingegaard attacked that I stayed calm and didn’t try to follow them as there was still 60 kilometres to go and I knew how hard the final climb was. It was in the valley afterwards that I was isolated with three Visma and three UAE guys who wanted to get back to their teammates and didn’t want to drag me with them,” recalls Onley.

“I could hear the time gap to the yellow jersey group growing and there were guys in that group ahead that were going to overtake me on GC. I think I have to credit my sports director Matt [Winston] in the team car at that point as he made me stay calm, told me the time gaps to my teammates who were coming up behind, and in the end they closed the gap for me to the yellow jersey group. From there, I actually saved so much energy not going over my limit on the Madeleine that it meant I could stay with the two top guys on the final climb of Col de La Loze.”

While Onley’s Tour de France performance can be considered a seminal moment in his career, and his fourth-place finish is something he would have undoubtedly signed for before the race began, he did narrowly miss out on the podium when, at times, it felt so close. He argues that there is nothing more he could have done to close the 1:12 gap to Florian Lipowitz in third though.

“If it was ten seconds then maybe I would have been disappointed but I don’t see any situation where I could have gained that minute back. I suppose I could have made the split on the first day of crosswinds and gained 40 seconds but then you can always look back and go ‘what if?’ If you do that, you end up thinking you could have won the Tour,” he reflects.

“I’m really satisfied with what I did and that is actually quite a big thing for me to say. I don’t come out of many races feeling fully satisfied and that’s what keeps me motivated and training for the next goals. What I’ve realised in the past few months since the Tour is that there is nothing more I could have done and I got the best possible result for myself.”

Being satisfied with his personal performance is one thing, but Onley admits that he was at a disadvantage to the likes of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, Visma-Lease a Bike and Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe by being part of a smaller-budget team without super domestiques to support him in the mountains. He stresses how grateful he was for the help his teammates did give him, but notes that more assistance so he isn’t always isolated at key moments is something that could lead to even better results in future Grand Tours.

“[Building a team around me] is something we’d already spoken about before the Tour and now I feel like I have more of a leg to stand on. I can ask a little bit more from the team that I have now proven I am capable of doing this and I would like some support,” he explains.

“That’s not to downplay what any of my teammates did in the Tour because they were at a really high level and they all stepped up to the challenge – none of them came into the Tour thinking they would be riding for a GC rider in the final week. They were really good but everyone has physical limits and it’s not just about me or the Tour, it’s about the whole season. Obviously, cycling is getting more and more competitive and there are teams stepping up with bigger budgets, so it can be hard to compete with those guys. It’s important we keep pushing and trying to build each year so we can get the most out of everyone.”

When it comes to the sport’s current super teams, UAE Team Emirates stand out with their record-breaking 86 victories in 2025 (compared to Team Picnic-PostNL’s four). Of course, many of those wins for the Emirati squad come from world champion Pogačar, who has been raising the standards in professional bike racing for the last five years. Going up against a generational talent like this to try to win yellow jerseys might be demoralising for some, but On-ley’s results in his career so far give him a quiet boost of motivation.

“I’d never even thought of it before, but now I’m starting to think that winning a Grand Tour is something that is possible. Just to say that is crazy for me. Getting to the level of Pogačar is definitely possible, but I think that five other guys will also do that and the level will keep progressing. The numbers I was doing in the Tour this year would probably have been good enough to win the Tour in 2020 and it keeps progressing like that. In another five years, there will be someone else we’re talking about. I don’t know if I am good enough to get to the level of really competing for the yellow jersey, but it is something that keeps me motivated. I’ll keep trying to get the most out of myself.”

It is clear that the Picnic-PostNL rider is not lacking in the work ethic or dedication needed to achieve his goals in the sport, and this is all made easier by the fact Onley has a simple, raw love for what he does. However, he has just turned 23 and is dealing with a weight of responsibility and expectation; balancing this with having some semblance of a normal life is something that Onley is still learning to do.

“I have to credit Casper van Uden [Picnic-PostNL’s 24-year-old sprinting talent] who is my housemate for helping me find balance. It is something that I wasn’t so good at when I first turned pro because I am someone who is so focused and maybe addicted to getting the best out of myself. Me and Casper will go out for dinner or go to the beach and I’m starting to learn that is also important,” he smiles.

Onley on stage 14 of the Tour (Image: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

“I’m also starting to learn that sometimes it is better to be a little bit undercooked than overcooked – if you want to have a long career, that’s definitely the best approach to go for.”

For Onley, life away from the bike consists of an off-season in Australia with his girlfriend so he can take some time apart from the circus of professional cycling and reflect on his 23rd year – the one in which many learned the name of the bike rider from Kelso taking on the world’s best. When he talks about what he does when he’s not riding up mountains or ticking off 20 minute efforts, the relaxed, fun side to Onley begins to shine through.

“I play a little bit of golf with dad and my grandad when I’m back home in the UK. I also played with Max Poole a few weeks ago and he’s pretty rubbish. Make sure you put that in the article,” he winks. “I enjoy coffee as well, going to different cafés. I have my own coffee machine so I spend quite a bit of time using that – and money!”

After a slight pause, Onley adds that wants to find time to return to the Borders in his off-season too, reconnecting with the places and people that made him. There will be no playing golf or artisan coffee sampling in Kelso, but there will be rolling fields, stormy skies and smiling faces of the ‘down-to-earth’ Scottish locals. This will always remain a big part of On-ley. Finishing in fourth place at the Tour de France hasn’t changed that, and from his character, it seems like no result in a bike race ever would.

“I should probably go home at some point. Straight after the season after Lombardy I want to spend a week there and catch up with the family. I don’t have a bike in Scotland now, so it’s a good way for me to stay away from training,” he grins. “Home is the one place where I feel that I can just really, really relax. That’s what is important.”