22-year-old Oscar Onley is midway through an ambitious five-year plan with his Picnic PostNL team designed to take him, and his British team mate Max Poole, to the top of the sport.
This year, Poole targeted the Giro d’Italia GC, where he finished a credible 11th place, 18 minutes down on winner Simon Yates. Meanwhile, Onley is currently mixing it with the best in the first week of the Tour de France, placing fourth on stage four behind winner Tadej Pogačar but comfortably in amongst the race favourites
But there is one thing that separates them – and it has nothing to do with how quick they ride up mountains.
“I’ll tell you one thing that Oscar can do but Max really can’t,” begins Phil West, one of three British sports directors on the Dutch team. “Eat red things.”
Erm, excuse me?
“Max has an aversion to food groups that are the colour red.”
Cue laughter, and Poole’s face turning the colour he so despises. “Yeah, it’s true,” he chuckles, sitting across from West in the team’s hotel in Calpe, Spain earlier this year. “Peppers are fine, tomatoes are OK, but red fruits… nah. Strawberries, red apples, red grapes, cherries, raspberries, red currants. No… Jam, no. Ketchup neither.”
A few weeks later, I ask Onley about this and he confirms it. “If we have porridge with red fruits like strawberries, Max can’t have it,” he says, speaking to me via videolink from his home in Andorra. “There’s also guaranteed to be one red thing on his plate at dinner that he doesn’t like. Every single time. It doesn’t matter what the taste is – it’s just the colour red he doesn’t like.” A good thing, then, that Picnic PostNL ride in blue and orange.
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Team-mates and regular training partners, neighbours in their adopted home of Andorra, and off-season holiday buddies, the softly spoken duo are set to be Britain’s main general classification hopes in the coming years. Based on their results so far, a podium finish in a future Grand Tour is not out of the question for either.
“We made a five-year plan for both of them when they came into the team, and each year there’s greater commitment and expectation,” explains Matt Winston, another British DS with Picnic PostNL. “That’s managed in a good and proper way, and they keep progressing. They and we have some pretty big goals.”
Onley and Poole were teenagers when they signed for DSM’s development team in 2021 and 2022 respectively. Both developed at a faster rate than initially expected, signing professional terms with the World Tour squad in 2023. “We’re both GC riders, but our styles are different,” says Onley, who hails from the Scottish Borders.
Onley held his position with the leading riders on the final climbs on stage four of the Tour de France.
(Image credit: Getty Images)
I ask how exactly, turning to West. “Max has a longer aerobic burn, whereas Oscar is better at tolerating nasty little kicks and changes in pace,” says the DS. “We’ve seen at the Vuelta a España and other races that Max is suited to pretty long climbs.”
Poole concurs, albeit modestly. “It’s not like there’s some crazy difference, but on the longer climbs I’d back myself, and Oscar for the punchier climbs,” says the Scunthorpe-born rider. “With Oscar’s characteristics, he can follow guys and rhythm changes, but I need a steadier, consistent pace. We’re similar but different, and that’s a strength when we race together.”
When I check this with Onley, he agrees: “It’s good that we can play our styles off each other,” he says. “At the Cro Race [in autumn 2022] we both came into the race as leaders despite being promoted from the development team, and when I finished second on stage three, Max fell straight into the support role for me, and it’s something he’s really good at.”
Though they have followed separate Grand Tour programmes, the two riders are ambitious friends following similar journeys. They frequently share responsibilities – brothers in arms, if you will. “At the Tour de Romandie in 2023, it was the other way around [with Poole finishing fourth on GC], and at the Tour of Guangxi in China last year he switched roles and worked for me as I finished second,” Onley continues. “We have a good relationship and it’s easy for us to work well together.”
Oscar Onley winning on Willunga Hill at the 2024 Tour Down Under
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Since 2022, the pair have started seven stage races together. During that time, Poole has scored seven top-10 GC results in senior week-long stage races, including finishing second to Sepp Kuss at last August’s Vuelta a Burgos. He topped the GC at October’s Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia.
Onley, meanwhile, has scored 13 top-10 GC results, regularly impressing in races decided on shorter, steeper climbs, such as the Tour Down Under’s Willunga Hill, where he triumphed at the start of the 2024 season. This is not to say that Onley can’t compete on Alpine climbs – he has shown promise on longer ascents too. His biggest issue to date has been injuries, breaking a collarbone three times between August 2023 and April 2024.
“Considering the setbacks, my performances potentially could have been even better, but my progression has still gone quicker than I expected,” Onley reflects. Not to feel left out, Poole fractured his collarbone at this March’s Strade Bianche.
For Poole, the challenge is turning good performances into wins. At last year’s Vuelta a España, he took one second place and, from breakaways, three thirds. “He needs to improve his final execution,” West says. “We had a run of opportunities in the Vuelta against punchy opposition and we got really close, but he just lacked a bit of experience and patience… When he can be more patient and back himself in those finals, then I think we’ll see that conversion from all those podiums to wins.”
Oscar Onley at the Tour of Britain
(Image credit: SWpix.com)
The hardening process has begun. “You need to be a bit of a bastard. Sometimes you have to be a bit smarter, ruthless, selfish,” West continues. “The obligation in cycling is always: ‘we’re in the break together, we’ll all do our equal turns’. But you have to play your best card, not someone else’s game.”
Poole nods along to West’s assessment. “The Covadonga stage in the Vuelta [he finished third] was a good example of me being too conscious of other factors, and I didn’t quite ride my own race. But you learn from it.” He did a few weeks later he took his first pro victory at Langkawi. “I pulled a Marc Soler,” he laughs, a reference to the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider who accompanied him in so many of those Vuelta breaks, “and it worked!”
Where Poole has the edge on his compatriot Onley is in time trialling. On flatter courses, Poole places in the top-10 in TTs, while Onley comes in around 20 spots lower. Onley accepts he has room for improvement. “I think I can improve in all areas – positioning and being comfortable when things are hectic or there are crosswinds is one – but the TT is something I really need to improve on,” he says.
“Especially in those flatter TTs, I’m a little bit behind where I want to be against riders of a similar size.” It’s for this reason that Onley thinks Poole is better placed to target the GC in three-week racing. “He’s got one up on me on the longer climbs and in time trialling, so in terms of the GC and what it means for Grand Tours, I think they suit Max better, and that’s how the team have been seeing it as well,” Onley says.
“But in one-week races, certain stages in Grand Tours and one-day races like the Ardennes, I think I’ve got the upper hand.” Indeed, while Poole is targeting the GC at the Giro, Onley’s task at the Tour will be stage-hunting. “I’ve not reached my full potential yet, but I’ve also not explored the GC in a Grand Tour,” the Scotsman says. “I’ve had lots of top-fives and -10s in one-week races, but that’s very different to doing it in a Grand Tour.
“You need to be a bit of a bastard. Sometimes you have to be a bit smarter, ruthless, selfish,”
Phil West, DS at Picnic PostNL
That’s another step, and to be honest I don’t know if I am capable of it yet. For now the focus is on stages.” Emblematic of his level-headed approach, Onley is content, for now at least, to focus on his development. “There are many areas to improve on before I can say I want to go to the Tour as a GC rider,” he says. “Right now I’d rather win a stage than sit 10th or 11th on GC.” I check this with Winston: isn’t Onley being too hard on himself? “They’re just approaching it in different ways, taking different routes,” says the DS. “Max will chip away on GC and ride a good TT, but Oscar can make gains on the punchier climbs.”
In carrying Britain’s GC hopes, Poole and Onley are somewhat shielded from the glare of expectation by being on a relatively low-profile team. Indeed, there’s a distinct possibility that Picnic PostNL could be relegated from the World Tour at the end of the season, which would likely null and void the two Brits’ current contracts.
But imagine for a moment that in 2027, the final year of their current contracts with the team, both are co-leaders at the Tour de France. Who wins? “So Wiggins and Froome all over again!” West says, excitedly. “Without a flatter TT in the final week, maybe I could hold on, but if there’s a TT, it’d be quite close,” reckons Onley. “I think Max would have the edge on me in some of the stages, the days with one long 40-to-60-minute climb, and on the softer stages with a shorter climb at the end I’d hold my own.” For Poole, the first hurdle is getting selected.
“Yeah, good point,” he laughs when asked why he’s not yet ridden the Tour. “I don’t know the answer to that, either. Why is it, Phil?” West the peacemaker steps in. “In the end we’ll see them both riding the Tour together at some point, I am sure. Imagine that: two Brits on the same team riding for the win in the Tour. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Yes, and it’s entirely plausible, too.
