Oscar Onley sprinted to victory from a small group on stage two of the Vuelta a Burgos on Wednesday, taking his first win for Netcompany-Ineos in the process.
The 23-year-old sprung from number of favourites atop the Valle de Sol climb, with Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) finishing in second, ahead of Enric Mas (Movistar). It means Onley is now in the leader's jersey, with three stages to come of the ProTour race, just ahead of fellow Briton Bjorn Koerdt (Picnic PostNL).
Onley, who joined Ineos at the beginning of the year, has had a disrupted season due to illness and injury. A crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in June led to his absence from the Tour de France, where he finished fourth overall in 2025. He finished second on a stage of the Volta ao Algarve in February, but has had to wait until now to step on to the top step of the podium. It is just his third career victory.
"I'm really happy," Onley said post-stage. :This hasn't been a good season for me so far; I've had a lot of setbacks and just not really got going, so I really wanted to come here, and the goal wasn't even to win, it was just to get some racing in the legs, to be honest."
"It was nice to be able to pay back the team, because they've fully supported me this whole year. Obviously being a new rider in the team, I wanted to show that I belonged here so it's quite a big relief.
"I guess today I showed that I have good legs, so we'll look at where I am on GC – I lost a bit of time yesterday but so did a lot of other GC guys – there's still a lot of racing to come."
The Scot's success is the second British triumph in two days at the Vuelta a España warmup race, after Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) won on stage one in Burgos, victorious from a reduced bunch sprint.
"Happy, but also quite relieved. I think there's been a lot of hard work, and especially today, the team really showed they believed in me so that was really good to see and I'm really happy it paid off," Brennan said on Tuesday.
