"It’s a desperate move by the INEOS Grenadiers" - Brian Smith on the buyout of Oscar Onley

British pundit and commentator Brian Smith has talked about some of the most relevant figures in British cycling over the past few months, sharing his thoughts on the retirement of Simon Yates; and also the signing of Oscar Onley by INEOS Grenadiers, reported to have cost several million euros.

In words to Road.CC, Smith was candid about his thoughts on the sudden retirement of his compatriot Simon Yates: “Was Simon Yates retiring a surprise? Probably not. They go away to these training camps for weeks, Tom Pidcock’s in Chile – there’s nothing there. It’s pressure, pressure, pressure the whole time and some people just say that’s enough".

The demands of being a pro cyclist are perhaps bigger than ever currently, not due to the racing days, but due to the extreme attention to detail from a very young age, which is a requirement just to be part of racing at a high level.

Beween altitude camps and the Criterium du Dauphiné, most Tour de France contenders arrived to the start already with almost two months straight away from home last summer, as an example. Then the demands of the race - where media duties heavily weight on the stars - make for a consistent search for as much recovery as possible, physical and mental.

This takes a big toll on the riders, specially those at the top. "What did Pogacar say at the Tour de France? He’s not doing the Vuelta, and there was talk of one word: burnout. They’re racing 80 days a year – in my day we raced 120. But there’s no place to hide now. I can totally understand it," Smith adds.

"The teams are abusing these athletes, it’s abuse. They’re looking at riders as Formula One cars. Any tweaks they can do to help performance, they’ll do it irreverent of whether the car crashes, is it going to save the life of the driver? They’re probably not thinking about that. They’re just thinking about performance and speeds".

In a separate point, there is the market race, in which teams now have to play years ahead. The signing of riders straight from the juniors is no longer crossing a line; and the signing of under-23 riders straight into a millionaire pro contract is also not unheard of. There has never been so much money in the sport, which is being used by the top teams to make dramatic moves.

One such as INEOS Grenadiers' signing of Oscar Onley this winter, buying out his existing contract with Team Picnic PostNL and reportedly paying a sum of several million euros. This sees him now as a new British leader in a British team.

“I was led to believe that this was so late in the day this happened that Oscar’s flight to the Tour Down Under was already paid for, that’s how late it went. Okay, it’s big money. But I think it’s a desperate move by the INEOS Grenadiers, because they’re under severe pressure to deliver in grand tours, especially at the Tour de France. If the figures I’ve seen published are true, it’s a huge amount of money to buy a rider out of their contract".

This is because the British team no longer had someone able to fight for a top result in a Grand Tour, whilst most riders capable of doing so are under long-term contracts. It is hard to obtain new leaders, but with Onley growing out of the more modest Picnic PostNL, there was space to buy his contract.

But that won't come without its downsides: “Pressure. Pressure’s the word. If I was giving him a bit of advice before he made that move, I’d have suggested that he should stay at Picnic-PostNL. And the team could have invested in two or three riders, which they did with James Knox".

“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, asking him to do the best he can". At INEOS, certainly the ambitions are higher, but so is the potential to achieve better results with a supporting team that is significantly improved.

“And now he’s been taken out of that environment, to an environment where it’s ‘we have to deliver’. And there’ll be huge pressure on him to deliver a big performance. Can he do it? I hope he does. But he’s up against some anomalies in cycling, probably the best ever era of grand tour riders".

But the ambitions are sky-high, and Onley is a long-term investment for the team. “Can Oscar Onley beat Pogacar, Vingegaard, and Evenepoel? That’s the big question," he adds. "I think he’s better looking at a Giro or a Vuelta if he wants to win a grand tour for them. And the big thing he’ll have, which I don’t think he would have had with Picnic, is the pressure.”