YATES'S FINESTRE HOUR

Returning to the setting of his most painful defeat, Simon Yates found redemption. Chris Marshall-Bell unpacks the tactics, tension and timing behind his decisive Giro turnaround

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It was one of the most amazing redemption stories in recent cycling history. Seven years after cracking on the same climb and losing the Giro d'Italia with two days remaining, Simon Yates returned to the Colle delle Finestre and, this time, rode himself into the lead on the penultimate stage. Yates later admitted that he had, in fact, anticipated the way the stage might unfold. “You won’t believe me, but... the whole stage went how I expected it to go,” he recently said at Rouleur Live. With Isaac Del Toro and Richard Carapaz first and second on GC, separated by 43 seconds and preoccupied with each other, Yates seized the moment. While they marked each other’s moves, he was able to ride clear and take a win shaped as much by patience and experience as by superior climbing ability.

To understand the magnitude and uniqueness of what Yates accomplished, we must first rewind a couple of years to the prequel. Back in 2018, Yates was a swashbuckling 25-year-old, attacking repeatedly as he chased stage victories. In doing so, he was an antidote to the formulaic GC riding style that had been established by Team Sky. Arguably a forerunner to Tadej Pogačar, Yates was altogether more exciting than what had gone before. At that year’s Giro d’Italia, he took pink on stage six, then claimed three stage victories in just seven days. Going into the final rest day, he held a lead of 2:11 over Tom Dumoulin and appeared to be in control. But then things fell apart.

Yates lost over a minute to Dumoulin and Chris Froome in the stage 16 time trial, then ceded a further 30 seconds on stage 18’s summit finish. A day later, on the Colle delle Finestre, a part-gravel climb, a suffering (and ill, it would later turn out) Yates was ambushed by a marauding Froome. The more experienced Brit attacked 80km out and held on to complete an incredible victory, while Yates lost a whopping 39 minutes and tumbled from first to 21st in the standings. It was a crushing defeat.