Mature Simon Yates must be bold if he is to silence demons of 2018

Times

26-05-2025

In an account of his grand tour of Italy in the 1760s, Edward Gibbon wrote that foreign travel was the only way to complete the education of an English gentleman. Perhaps it is not the type of education that Gibbon meant — not necessarily renaissance art or Roman ruins — but the 12 British riders at the Giro d'Italia are certainly learning something.
Simon Yates, Tom Pidcock and Josh Tarling will have mostly been looking at the riders around them, at the tarmac ahead of them, and at the mountains to come in the final week. Tarling, 21, has taken a time-trial stage win, the youngest ever at the Giro; Paul Double, who started his first grand tour at the age of 28, has looked punchy in the breakaway; Mark Donovan has turned himself inside out for Pidcock. And Pidcock himself even rose briefly above Adam Yates in the general classification.
But the quiet star has been Simon Yates, second in the overall standings behind Isaac del Toro. The 32-year-old from Bury has become something of a tragic hero in Italy after his doomed assault on the Corsa Rosa in 2018. It has since become 'the one that got away'.
It was toward the end of Team Sky's domination. We had watched the new super team dominate the grand tours in their distinctive style: pace trains in the mountains, head down, watt-watching, marginal gains. It was a dominant method but, perhaps, a boring one for a spectator.
Then in 2018 Yates, racing for Mitchelton-Scott, took the battle to the super team. The 25-year-old won three stages and wore the Pink Jersey from stage six until stage 19, just two days away from an overall win.
On the Queen Stage between Venaria Reale and Bardonecchia, however, Yates cracked. He paid for the efforts of his attacking style. It had been exciting, but it was too much to maintain. Chris Froome attacked, the man from Bury broke on the Colle delle Finestre — where the race will return for stage 20 on Saturday — and that was that. Yates finished 21st, 1hour 15min 11sec back from Froome.
And so the Giro remained unfinished business. He won the Vuelta a España in 2018 (and remains the only British grand tour winner outside of Team Sky/ Ineos Grenadiers) and he competed at the Tour de France, but there's always been a feeling that Yates must try again to win the Giro d'Italia.
This year he came back as part of Visma-Lease a Bike, the Dutch super team of Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard. He has more support than he ever did at Mitchelton-Scott (now Jayco AlUla) and he is the sole leader. He is also now in his early thirties, with stage wins in all three grand tours and numerous other stage-race victories. He is very different to the 25-year-old he was in 2018 and it has shown already in this race.
It has been a mature and quiet first two weeks for Yates. He has done nothing spectacular, but is in the right place at the right time. He has kept safe and remained in the lead groups. Short, sharp climbs are not for Yates and while we may have seen him gunning for stages in the past, this year he appears to be playing the long game, waiting for the mountains.
On the bike he looks solid. He performed well in both time-trials — perhaps the purest way to check a rider's form — and in the climbs he has looked strong. Yates hasn't missed a lead group yet, nor has he emptied himself in search of an early stage win.
Meanwhile, his team is also growing around him. Wout van Aert appears to be finally coming into some form after winning stage nine into Siena. And Olav Kooij's win on stage 12 into Viadana will also have bolstered the team's confidence.
They are also united. Yates is the undisputed leader and he's in second place. Visma will do everything they can to look after him, although perhaps they lack a mountain domestique like Sepp Kuss at this race.
Meanwhile, their main rivals, UAE Team Emirates, are in something of a predicament. Their original leader, Juan Ayuso, has dropped back to third, 1min 26sec from the race leader, his team-mate Del Toro.
Ayuso has been caught out multiple times with bad positioning and has on occasion looked ragged. Del Toro has looked excellent, but occasionally isolated. It was through his own positioning and race craft that he made the key move on Saturday, when a crash mixed up the general classification, not his team looking after him. And on Sunday, he himself had to chase down attacks from the former Giro winners Egan Bernal and Richard Carapaz.
The issue is, perhaps, that Del Toro is an unknown quantity when it comes to a mountainous third week in a grand tour — that and Ayuso is the favoured child. UAE, then, will probably continue to hedge their bets, something Visma can play to their own advantage. If they can isolate Del Toro, or Ayuso, then some real damage can be done. There's no point being a super team if you're split in half.
On the other hand, having two riders in the top three gives you cards to play against Yates. But so far, Del Toro seems to be doing it all himself.
Yates has ridden a perfect, mature race so far. Now he'll have to deliver the performances, if indeed he does have the legs. A quiet two weeks for him has worked well, but you can't win the Giro d'Italia with whispers, he'll need to conjure his 2018 self to take on the Maglia Rosa. And what a story that would be. Seven years after Yates became the tragic hero of Italy, wouldn't it be wonderful if he could become just 'the hero'? Foreign travel completed the education of an English gentleman, now Yates has had plenty of that.