Yates takes it easy on first day in pink

Simon Yates insists he is not Mitchelton-scott’s de facto leader at the Giro d’italia now that he is wearing the pink jersey of the race leader.

Yates took the famous maglia rosa after a scorching performance on Mount Etna on Thursday and the 25-year-old from Bury retained it on the seventh stage from Pizzo to Praia a Mare yesterday.

The stage was a flat 159-kilometre blast along the Calabrian coast and it ended in a bunch sprint, won by Sam Bennett (Bora-hansgrohe). He is the first Irishman to win a Giro stage since Stephen Roche in 1987. “The first day in pink was good,” Yates said. “A relaxed day as the right breakaway went away, so it was easy and we didn’t have to do too much controlling.”

Yates has been in excellent form for the first week of the Giro, posting a top-10 result in the openingday prologue in Jerusalem and consistently finishing towards the front of stages.

But Yates said he still anticipated losing time to second-placed Tom Dumoulin (Sunweb) in the thirdweek time trial; still needed to gain more time in the mountain stages to stand a chance of victory in Rome; and was still sharing leadership duties with team-mate Esteban Chaves, who was the 2016 Giro runner-up and is only 26 seconds back on general classification.

There could be opportunities for general classification riders in today’s mountain finish at the end of a 130-mile route from Praia a Mare to Montevergine. Team Sky’s fourtime Tour de France winner Chris Froome is eighth, 1min 10sec behind Yates.