The break formed early on the final stage of Itzulia Basque country featuring 19 riders, of which 3 were dsm-firmenich PostNL representatives Oscar Onley, Martijn Tusveld and Romain Combaud. After the summit of Azurki, Combaud decided to return to the peloton. As the stage went on and the climbs kept coming, more riders dropped from the front group, and with 69km to go, Oscar Onley was part of 7-man group pushing the pace up the relentless parcours of the day. With less than 30km remaining, Onley followed an attack by Esteban Chaves and eventually was solo leading to the summit of the second to last climb of the day, the Izua. Later he was joined by the chasing group behind that then fractured leaving Onley with 2 others to contest for minor places within the top 5. It was P5 for Oscar as his big efforts of the day meant he had little left in the tank, but still a fantastic result by the young Brit.
After a week in the Basque Country, here are coach Phil West’s final thoughts “Today was a good day. There was some nice teamwork again as we wanted to create options through the stage, we made a plan to be positioned well for the first climb and keep an overview of the race at that moment and when there was movement, particularly a big group it was important for Oscar to be there. We came into the stage with the image in our minds to keep calm until a little bit later when the race opened up a bit and then he could use his climbing skills whilst everyone else is under pressure. We made sure we had our eye on key riders and teams particularly those GC riders but also where we had other opportunities with the likes of Chaves or Kuss. Going into the final climb, it was all on legs. Oscar unfortunately couldn’t quite follow the punchy attack by Rodriguez and Ayuso, but he rode well with Skjelmose and Soler. Overall, I think he should be happy with that. The teamwork this week has been really good for the guys and I’m glad we could all take home a great result on the final stage after a solid week together”