What’s next for Yates?
through. “In the high mountains, it will be cold, but I enjoy the cold. I prefer it, to be honest,” Yates says.
La dolce vita
There’s another thing that puts Yates at ease in Italy. In fact, there are a few: its people, its landscape, its food, its coffee. “In France, Spain, elsewhere, I have to bring my own Aeropress with me to make a coffee in the morning, but in Italy I don’t have to do that. It’s already good enough,” he laughs. “The pizza as well. That’s great. I’d go for pizza every day of the year if I could, but maybe that’s not a good thing. It’s a good job the pasta is alright. I enjoy Italy a lot.”
Will he still be saying that deep into the final week when the race hits the Dolomites? That will depend on his position on GC, and the 64.8km of time trials, especially against Thomas, suggest that Yates will have to accrue time in the mountains.
“You don’t want to be on the back foot in that final week because it’s a huge effort, though there are opportunities to make time back,” he says, confirming suspicions that he’ll attempt to do what he does best: attack. Of the leading Grand Tour riders, since the start of the 2018 season, only Primož Roglič with a staggering 27 and Tadej Pogačar with 17 have won more races than Yates’s 14. The stats don’t lie: for the Bury man, only victory is good enough.
“In 2018, where there were a lot of small climbs towards the finish, or at Etna early in the race, opportunities where stages were up for grabs and we tried, and we will hope to gain some time like that again. If a stage is up for grabs, there’s no point holding back because just to stay in the wheels, you’re going to be going full-gas anyway because someone else is.
If the chance is there, I always try and have a go,” he concludes. “There’s no holding back in those situations, so I would try for the stage always.”
There’s no hiding the fact: the Giro is Yates’s current obsession. “I prefer the Giro,” he says. But at some point, one would expect him to turn his attention to the Tour de France, a race in which he won two stages in 2019.
The Tour question elicits a shrug-of-the-shoulders response. “I’ve done the Tour, I don’t know, four or five times.” It’s four, Simon. Clearly, then, the Bury-born rider doesn’t profess to people that he has ridden the World’s Biggest Race™, like mythology suggests all bike riders do to non-cycling fans. But one day, he’d like to at least challenge for GC at the Tour. “At some point I would like to go for it. When that will be, right now I don’t know because at the moment the Giro is all
I think about.”
He does have another goal, though, one he is happy to entertain the thought of. “When I was growing up, the Olympics was one of my passions.” He had originally constructed the 2020 season around the Games, eschewing the Tour in favour of Tokyo. The rearranged Games now take place next July, and he will devote his 2021 season to winning there on a 234km mountainous course that should suit him.
“The Olympics have always been a huge goal for me and they still are. I am very focused on that. I would say that I will put all of my focus next season on that,” he explains.
The sprinters’ line-up for the Giro d’italia is an impressive one, with at least as much strength in depth as the Tour de France. The big four names – Elia Viviani (Cofidis), Michael Matthews (Sunweb), Arnaud Démare (Groupama-fdj) and Fernando Gaviria (Deceuninckquick Step) – all have multiple Grand Tour stage wins in their palmarès.
Of those, Viviani looks the most shaky. He didn’t look his usual self at the Tour. Maybe he was off form, missing the Deceuninck lead-out train
Sprint battle
or perhaps just saving himself for his home Grand Tour. Cofidis will hope it’s the latter as they’ve not been to this race since 2010.
Démare, it seems, just can’t stop winning at the moment. So far postlockdown, he has bagged six wins, and that doesn’t include the GC and points wins he took in both the