“I don’t feel any pressure to perform straight away” – Oscar Onley shuts down talk of immediate expectations ahead of INEOS Grenadiers debut

Oscar Onley’s first race in INEOS Grenadiers colours arrives quietly, by design. The 23-year-old will make his debut for the British team at the Volta ao Algarve this week, but he is determined that Portugal is about learning, not proving.

“I’m just looking forward to getting stuck into some racing this week,” Onley said ahead of the five-day race, in an interview released by INEOS. “From a performance side, I don’t feel any pressure to perform straight away.”

It is a measured message from a rider whose winter has been anything but calm. Onley’s late move from Picnic PostNL to INEOS Grenadiers followed a breakthrough Tour de France in which he finished fourth overall, immediately placing him among the most discussed riders of the off-season. Since then, questions about pressure, expectation and whether INEOS is the right environment have followed him into 2026.

Onley’s own tone could hardly be more different.

Rather than talking about results, Onley has repeatedly emphasised process. Algarve, he says, is about understanding how his new team functions.

“The main focus is really learning how the team works. I’m still learning where all the drawers are on the bus,” he said. “I think the important thing is how we work as a team, as riders, as a whole group here and having fun along the way as well.”

It is a deliberately human framing. The race is familiar territory for Onley, who competed there three years ago, winning the young rider classification and finishing 12th overall in one of his earliest WorldTour appearances. “I did this race three years ago now, and I really enjoyed it back then. It was a nice way to just start the season,” he said.

That sense of continuity matters. Despite the change of jersey, Onley is keen to underline that this is not a reinvention of who he is as a rider.

INEOS Grenadiers have made no secret of why they signed Onley. The team wants to return to the top of the Tour de France, and the Scot is central to that ambition.

“It’s no secret that the Tour is the main focus for the year, for myself and for the team,” Onley said. “I think we have a really strong lineup there, and quite a few different and exciting goals going into it as well.”

What he has not done is inflate those goals publicly. Instead, his early-season programme mirrors what has worked for him before. After Algarve, Onley is set to race Paris-Nice, then Volta a Catalunya, before building towards July along familiar lines. “From there the build-up really starts for the Tour and that normal pathway into there,” he said.

It is a conservative, controlled schedule. And it sits in stark contrast to the external commentary that has followed his transfer.

While Onley insists he feels no immediate pressure, not everyone is convinced that pressure can be so easily managed at INEOS Grenadiers.

Speaking recently on the road.cc Podcast, Brian Smith offered one of the strongest critiques of the move. “Oscar Onley shouldn’t have gone to INEOS,” Smith said, questioning whether the timing and environment were right for a rider still developing.

Smith contrasted Onley’s former surroundings with what awaits him now. “I feel as if Picnic PostNL developed him, and it’s a group he enjoyed being part of, more of a family team who were there to support him,” he said. “And now he’s been taken out of that environment, to an environment where it’s ‘we have to deliver’.”

Smith returned repeatedly to the same word when describing the move. “Pressure. Pressure’s the word,” he said.

For Smith, that pressure is structural rather than personal, tied to INEOS’ own need to deliver results at the Tour de France after several difficult seasons.

Those warnings sit uncomfortably alongside Onley’s calm public stance. Where critics see expectation, urgency and scrutiny, Onley talks about learning systems, enjoying racing and taking things step by step.

There is no denial that the Tour de France sits at the centre of INEOS’ ambitions. But there is also no sign that Onley intends to rush his own progression to meet anyone else’s timeline. “I’m still figuring everything out in the team first,” he said. “I don’t feel any pressure to perform straight away.”

That distinction matters. It suggests a rider who understands the scale of what he has joined, but who is also determined not to let outside narratives dictate his early months in new colours.

Volta ao Algarve is not a race that will define Onley’s season. It is not meant to. But the way he has framed his debut does make a statement.

He is not arriving to announce himself as a saviour, nor to justify a transfer fee or a long-term plan. He is arriving to race, to learn, and to settle into a new environment on his own terms.

Whether that calm approach can survive the intensity of a Tour de France build up remains to be seen. For now, Onley is choosing to set the tone himself.

The pressure, he insists, can wait.