{"id":361438,"date":"2024-01-20T07:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T08:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=361438"},"modified":"2024-01-21T01:04:56","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T01:04:56","slug":"young-brit-dons-willunga-crown-to-set-up-thrilling-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=361438","title":{"rendered":"Young Brit dons Willunga crown to set up thrilling close"},"content":{"rendered":"

Willunga Hill has a new champion. Oscar Onley conquered Tour Down Under's<\/a> penultimate stage, out-sprinting a small group that arrived together at Willunga's summit.<\/p>\n

The young Brit leading a Dutch team displayed patience and the leg speed needed to survive the final climb and last kilometre.<\/p>\n

Onley (DSM-Firmenich PostNL) made sure he was first into a final sweeping left hand corner, edging out Stephen Williams (Israel-Premier Tech), whilst crucially opening up a five-second gap to Jhonatan Narvaez (Ineos-Grenadiers) and race leader Isaac Del Toro (UAE-Emirates).<\/p>\n

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Historically the final ascent of Willunga whittles down the contenders, creating ample time gaps that shape the general classification but today there was no separating Onley and Williams.<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Incredibly, the pair will head into tomorrow's final stage on the same time but Williams thanks to his third place on stage 2 will wear the ochre leader's jersey tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Despite missing out on the leader's jersey today, Onley believes his team got the tactics right with a day still to play out.<\/p>\n

"I came here with quite high expectations, and I guess, obviously coming to every race wanting to win, but I really felt like I had a good shot if I played it right," Onley said.<\/p>\n

"I really have to credit the team over the winter who have kind of like helped me with this kind of tactical game because I think in the past maybe I've had the legs to get better results, but I've not been tactically so smart."<\/p>\n

https:\/\/twitter.com\/tourdownunder\/status\/1748609194096283989<\/a><\/p>\n

Onley, at just 21 years old, continued this year's theme of youthful success, following on from 19-year-old Mexican sensation Isaac Del Toro.<\/p>\n

But Australian teammate and Team DSM-Firmenich PostNL Road Captain Chris Hamilton isn't surprised by the young Brit's performance.<\/p>\n

After racing with Onley for the first time back in October 2022, he recalls Onley went toe to toe with Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard.<\/p>\n

"So, from there, I think he opened and he raised a few eyebrows he's just been chipping away and, developing slowly," said Hamilton.<\/p>\n

"And he always had a massive engine, but it just takes a bit of time to find out how and when to use it, and he's worked it out.<\/p>\n

"He's been a massive talent ever since you know, he came through the DSM development team".<\/p>\n

\"Oscar<\/p>\n

Despite being pipped at the line, Williams (Israel-Premier Tech) was praised by his road Captain Simon Clarke for not only today's brilliant ride on the slopes of Willunga but for being vigilant for bonus seconds from the first stage.<\/p>\n

"You haven't seen us chasing bonus seconds all week for no reason," Clarke said.<\/p>\n

"And this is exactly why. So, I think we wouldn't be in this situation if we hadn't been chasing those seconds.<\/p>\n

"We just got to keep doing what we've been doing and execute another plan tomorrow like we did today, and we should be in with a good chance".<\/p>\n

Tomorrow's 128km stage will host a battle for ochre jersey which will not be exclusive between Williams and Onley,<\/p>\n

With the top-10 is only separated by 25 seconds, tomorrow's 128km and final stage of this year's Tour Down Under will not be an exclusive battle between Williams and Onley.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Willunga Hill has a new champion. Oscar Onley conquered Tour Down Under's penultimate stage, out-sprinting a small group that arrived together at Willunga's summit. The […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":361440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361438"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=361438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":361443,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361438\/revisions\/361443"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/361440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}