Latest news with #Lipowitz
Qatar Tribune
3 days ago
- Sport
- Qatar Tribune
German rider Lipowitz welcomes a break after Tour de France podium heroics
dpa Paris Florian Lipowitz planned a quiet Monday in Paris after a stunning third-place finish at the Tour de France the previous day. 'I am looking forward to the break,' the Tour debutant said after completing the final podium behind four-time winner Tadej Pogacar and ex-champion Jonas Vingegaard. Lipowitz said he would stay in Paris Monday and enjoy a croissant and a café au lait with his partner as he admitted he still has to come to terms with his biggest career success, which also includes winning the white jersey classification for the best young rider. 'It will take me another day or two to realize what happened over the past three weeks. It was always my dream. I never thought it would become reality. It is very special to ride onto the podium in my first Tour,' the 24-year-old Lipowitz said. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was among those to congratulate Lipowitz. 'A sensational German success at the Tour de France. Congratulations, Florian Lipowitz on an outstanding third place,' Merz said on platform X, adding that he had 'thrilled many cycling fans across the country.' Lipowitz is the first German on the final Tour podium since Andreas Klöden in 2006 to make the final Tour podium. The former biathlete had already shown his big talent by coming seventh at last year's Vuelta a Espana, and he finished third behind Pogacar and Vingegaard at the Critérium du Dauphiné last month. Lipowitz admitted that Pogacar and Vingegaard are 'still at another level' but he has now firmly established himself among the best. Lipowitz gave the Red Bull team a first Tour podium after the team celebrated victories at the Giro d'Italia and Vuelta in previous years. Team general manager Ralph Denk spoke of 'a milestone' and 'the icing on the cake to achieve it with a rider you became a pro cyclist at your team.' Denk named the development of Lipowitz 'a project of the heart' and said it would be 'a dream' if Lipowitz could win the Tour one day. Lipowitz meanwhile also remained relaxed around speculation that double Olympic gold medallist and time trial world champion Remco Evenepoel could join the team. 'I would be happy as well if he really comes. We could achieve something great together,' he said.
The Citizen
6 days ago
- Sport
- The Citizen
Battle for white jersey takes centre stage on Tour
Young guns Onley and Lipowitz vie for the podium. The Tour de France will make its usual entry into Paris this weekend as the 2025 tour wraps up. Picture: Firas Abdullah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images His rivals have tried mightily to dislodge Tadej Pogacar from the yellow jersey of the Tour de France but he has withstood all the tricks and tactics they've applied over three weeks and 18 stages – and simply counterpunched and left them floundering. He will win the race in Paris on Sunday – you can bet on it. Actually, there's no point in betting on it; you'll win just one cent for every rand wagered on the Slovenian superstar at odds of 1.01. Second-placed Jonas Vingegaard has blown out on an Alpine breeze to 23.00 for the Win. There are other bets to be had as the Tour winds up – with another mountain stage on Friday and a hilly stage on Saturday, before the honour parade into Paris on Sunday. Third place and best young rider One intriguing battle is between Germany's Florian Lipowitz and Britain's Oscar Onley for third place overall – and, simultaneously, for the white jersey that signifies the best young rider. Lipowitz leads Onley by 22 seconds after Thursday's brutal stage in the Alps, with the latter passing the former on the road of the climb to the Col de la Loze but just failing to pass him on the leaderboard. Lipowitz has had a superb Tour. He might have simply had a tough moment on Stage 8 and will bounce back on the ascent to the ski resort of La Plagne. However, Onley is looking stronger as the race reaches a climax. Lipowitz is a 1.65 chance to finish in the top three and Onley is at 2.65. Old warhorse Primoz Roglic is a 5.05 top three chance after hanging in bravely with the top General Classification contenders. Among the many other offerings from Betway are various prominent riders to win a stage. Among the more appealing here are: Vingegaard (no 1.03, yes 7.15), Onley (1.00, 32.00), Quinn Simmons (1.03, 7.15), Wout van Aert (1.10, 5.00) and Jordi Meeus (1.00, 9.90). These Betway odds are correct at time of publishing and subject to change.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Why Oscar Onley could be the Tour de France's most surprising podium finisher for years
Oscar Onley is slumped with his back against the barriers, his whole upper body tremoring as it seeks air. His breath fogs and mingles with the summit mist. His eyes are wide as if he needs to inhale oxygen through them as well. With three stages of the Tour de France remaining, the 22-year-old Scot is just 22 seconds off third place in the general classification (GC). Advertisement A podium, should he overhaul Florian Lipowitz, would be the most surprising top-three finish since Jean-Christophe Péraud in 2014. It has been an explosive entrance into the sport's consciousness for a rider who only won his first professional race at the Tour Down Under last year. After finishing fourth on the sharp lift into Rouen on stage four, Onley had to log into ProCyclingStats to check where he finished, scrolling through it on his warm-down bike. 'I didn't know if Romain (Gregoire) had got past me,' he said. 'I was pretty cross-eyed.' But the only names above him were of the true elite — Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, and Jonas Vingegaard. 'Some of my team-mates and staff say to me, 'You are one of these guys',' Onley said before that stage. 'I don't really see it like that yet.' There is a visible naivety to Onley after these big results, a sense of confusion over why the attention on him is so fierce, so quickly. At the top of the Col de la Loze, after Thursday's stage, it was as if he had not quite registered how close he was to third. 'Yeah, that's…' he began. 'I don't know. That's not much. So we'll give it everything tomorrow.' We're all signing up to OnleyFans 🏴#TDF2025 — ITV Cycling (@itvcycling) July 19, 2025 But this flies in the face of the assuredness with which he rides his bike. Lipowitz is two years older, but rides more rashly. While Lipowitz spent virtually all of stage 18 in the wind, Onley paced his efforts, remained protected, and was ultimately the only man who could follow Pogacar and Vingegaard in the final kilometres. He has now erased a two-minute gap to the podium down to the width of a wildflower's stem. His answer to the storm has been to climb faster. At the start of the Tour, Picnic–PostNL's hopes for Onley were cautiously optimistic. Curiosity is probably the most accurate emotion, with his team desperate to see what a rider who fractured his collarbone three times between August 2023 and April 2024 could really do. He rode the Tour last year, finishing 39th. There were small signs of promise, such as finishing fifth on the climb to SuperDévoluy, but nothing of this magnitude. Advertisement Though he had performed well in last month's Tour de Suisse, placing third overall and winning stage five, the field was not as strong as the loaded Critérium du Dauphiné. 'The first 10 days, we're just gonna keep him safe in the race,' Matt Winston, the team's directeur sportif, told The Athletic before the Tour started. 'We'll probably lose some time, need to find the right moment to get in the breakaway — and then when you get caught, you might be able to hang onto GC. So we just want to play it a little bit open, a bit relaxed, and see how far we can come.' Leaving it all out there 🥵 You can be proud of that ride @OscarOnley 🙌🏻#KeepChallenging #TDF2025 — Team Picnic PostNL (@picnicpostnl) July 24, 2025 An undercurrent behind Onley's performance has been his team's predicament. Picnic–PostNL appeared favourites for relegation to the ProTour just a few months ago — but Onley's points have fired them above Cofidis towards safety. But this meant they were targeting stage victories over GC — a top 10 would have been seen as an excellent result. 'I've had lots of top-fives and -10s in one-week races, but that's very different to doing it in a Grand Tour,' he told Cycling Weekly back in March. 'That's another step, and to be honest, I don't know if I am capable of it yet. The focus is on stages.' Top five? One-week races? How about top three over the three weeks of the Tour de France? Onley's superpower has been consistency. There has been no need for him to dive into breakaways — finishing fourth on the ramps of Rouen, third on the Mûr-de-Bretagne, fifth on the Hautacam, sixth to Superbagnères, and fourth up the Col de la Loze. Even his time trialing, seen as a major weakness entering the race, has developed significantly. A common cycling phrase is that a rider has diamonds in their legs — Onley's feel more like granite. The boy from Kelso, in the Scottish Borders, has come a long way. He grew up right next to a steep climb used by his local club, the Kelso Wheelers, but focused instead on cross-country running while growing up. His father, a black cab driver, split his time between Kelso and London, but regularly took Onley out in the hills. His mother was visible at this year's grand départ (start of the Tour), cheering on her son as he stood on the rostrum in Lille's central square. Advertisement He was never a particularly dominant junior, telling Rouleur last year that: 'I'm still quite small now, but as an under-14 and an under-16, I was really tiny, so the track and the criterium courses we did, they didn't suit me very well. I never really got any results.' Nevertheless, he made his way into the junior Scotland team. Winston signed him for Picnic in 2020, amid the Covid-19 pandemic, without seeing him race in person. Instead, he relied on data — an approach that has worked for several elite riders, including Vingegaard — having been flagged by Scottish cycling coaches Gary Coltman and Mark McKay. 'Mark came to me and said, 'Look, there's a rider who I believe will be a future Tour winner and I want to take him in a junior team to a race in the Alps',' Coltman told British newspaper The Times last week. 'So we agreed to do it. There was some kind of mountain time-trial and Oscar just blew them all away. Two teams wanted to sign him. There was an offer from the AG2R La Mondiale amateur team and as soon as the possibility of joining a French team arose, this 16-year-old kid from Kelso started learning French. 'He was very level-headed, very committed and very driven. What struck was the way he took control of his career.' Onley is now taking control of this race. He is still only midway through a five-year development plan crafted for him by Picnic. At the end of those five years? Who knows. Oscar Onley has no idea either. That's why he is so exciting.
