GUTSY BRIT YATES STILL IN THE PINK
BY FRANK HAYNES SIMON YATES gave British cycling a glorious glimpse of the Pink Jersey by closing in on an historic win at the Giro d’Italia time trial.
Despite his overnight lead being cut to less than a minute, the Bury Express produced a gutsy effort on the 21.4-miles from Trento to Rovereto.
And Yates said: “In the final 10 kilometres I died a thousand deaths out there.”
But what started out as a quirky script has now become reality for the peloton – there’s another Brit wearing the leader’s jersey at the business end of a Grand Tour and it’s not Chris Froome.
Although defending champion Tom Dumoulin slashed his overnight advantage from 2min 11sec to 56sec, Yates is now strong favourite to bring home the pancetta in Rome on Sunday.
On a pivotal stage 16 that was always likely to have a huge bearing on the destiny of the title, Yates had to dig deep to prevent his lead disappearing completely.
But with three mountain stages to come tomorrow, Friday and Saturday, the Maglia Rosa is heading for the spiritual home of black pudding.
Froome, who is holder of the Tour de France and Vuelta crowns, moved up to fourth in the general classification with a classy ride, just 35secs down on Australia’s stage winner Rohan Dennis, and he is well-placed to make the podium.
But Mitchelton-Scott rider Yates, 25, is now within sight of becoming the first Briton to win the Giro.
He said: “I thought I would lose a lot more time but I managed to hang on and I’m really happy.
“Now, unfortunately for the fans, I can afford to change my tactics for the coming days and I’ll probably have to ride a lot more defensively all the way to Rome – sorry guys!
“I’m in a good position but we’ve still some hard stages to come and every rider can have bad days.
“I really hope we can take it to Rome from here but the other guys in the GC picture are all immensely strong, they are all fantastic riders and I’m not counting any of them out.
“I’d like to have a bigger gap but I’m very satisfied with where I stand now.”