INTERVIEW: ADAM YATES

Adam Yates won the Tour’s white jersey in 2016 and has been touted as a future winner. He tells Procycling about learning hard lessons from last year’s race and how much stronger he feels this season

The former white jersey winner on learning tough lessons from last year’s Tour

I’m getting older, but so is everyone else. I don’t feel like I’ve got to the peak yet. I still feel fresh. I still feel young, I still feel like when I first started, if I’m honest. Keep getting experience and keep getting stronger. If you work hard and put the work in, that’s all you can do.

I can’t say that any grand tour is my favourite race because there’s so much more stress than any other. I like racing, but when there’s lot of stress it’s never fun. In a smaller race you can be a bit more adventurous, you can try out different tactics, see what works and what doesn’t. I kind of prefer that to the bigger races.

I’m not going to say I want to get this or that from this year’s Tour de France - as a race, it’s too unpredictable. Last year I crashed three or four times early on, I had more bad luck and then I had small problems, made some small mistakes. I’d rather go in there and do the best I can. But if I’m in the form I’m in now, or hopefully a little better, then I’m racing the same guys as I have all year. If I get some better luck, then maybe I can do something special.

It was a bit of everything at the Tour last year; it was hot, I didn’t drink enough. Training was good. Two, three weeks before, I was second at the Dauphiné and won the last stage. It’s just one of those things.

I learned lessons already in that Tour and I could share my experience with the guys at the Vuelta, and we made big changes there. Not just with me, but the other guys in the team, just to look a bit closer at the little things. If you go in and you feel good and it didn’t work out, you think, ‘What’s going on?’ But I knew, not just me but the team, we all failed a little bit, at the little things. We’ve made changes and already this year those changes have been implemented. It makes a big difference, the small details.

If you go in to the Tour and you’re aiming for 10th, that’s not really what I’m into. If I’m aiming for something I want to aim for the top step. Whether you can pull it off you have to wait and see, but aiming for sixth or seventh… sixth or seventh in the Tour is still a pretty big achievement, but you’ve got to aim higher.

It’s been my best spring ever and winning that Pyrenean stage in the Volta a Catalunya was very important for me, a high point of my career. I’ve won hilly stages in the past, but it was the first time I’ve ever won a full mountain stage, one ending with a 40-minute climb. I’ve been up there with the GC favourites lots of times on the climbs, but there’s always been a break ahead of me. This time, I got it.

Then there’s my team-mates. The guys who I think will most likely be with me in the Tour are in great shape. Every time in every race we’ve raced in so far, be it Catalunya, Basque Country, Tirreno, we’ve being riding as if we are going for the win.

It’s almost like we’re practicing for the Tour. You still want to win these oneweekers, too, because if you can’t do that on the ‘small’ stage how can you possibly expect to do that in the bigger races?

This year I reckon it’ll be a better Tour route for me. We’ve got a TTT early on. Hopefully that’ll create some gaps between the GC guys. Then the first mountain stage is stage 6. Last year we had Mûr-deBretagne as a summit finish, but it was a two-minute climb. We had 10 or 11 stages before anything happened. It was ridiculous.

The time trial is lumpy, which I like a bit more. I find that I struggle when it’s completely flat. It doesn’t matter how hard I go, the power I produce is the same for the climbs, but for whatever reason it’s not good enough. As soon as there’s a little hill, even if it’s something technical, then I go up in the standings. This year I’ve had two top 10s in TTs just because they were hilly rather than completely flat, like the one in Tirreno where the only climbs are the speed bumps. Everybody asks me if I’ve done more time trial training over the winter and I have, but I can’t just create more watts from nowhere. When I produce the same power in a TT that would win me a mountain stage, I end up losing a minute and a half.

Attacking racing is hard to do. Everyone thinks, why don’t you just attack? It’s not as easy as that, you’ve got to have the legs, you’ve got to feel good. If you’re attacking and you’re gaining time you’re the strongest in the race. If you don’t get the feeling then you’re not attacking, because if you do attack you could lose minutes. It’s all a game. Most of all it depends on the stages to come, the stage at the time, and how you are feeling, if you’ve had a big day before.