Simon's Profile

Along with twin brother Adam, Simon was named to the Great Britain Cycling Team’s men’s road race team for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for what would be his debut at the Games.

However, Yates’s status as one of only five British riders to have ever won a Grand Tour and a long career of success on track and road at international level made him an obvious choice for the squad.

His palmares include a 2013 UCI World Track Championship gold medal but it was on the road, with the Australian-based team that currently goes by the name BikeExchange, that Yates has really made his mark on the sport.

The highlight, arguably, was the Vuelta, the Spanish Grand Tour, which Yates won in 2018 but he has also won two stages, and the young rider classification, at the Tour de France and four stages on the Giro d’Italia.

His consistency over multiple races also saw him come first in the UCI World Tour rankings in 2018, making him the first British rider to win that title.

Biography

Along with brother Adam, Simon first encountered cycling at Manchester Veldrome, where he was taken by his father John to ride with his club Bury Clarion, before going on to ride for the team and the local Eastlands Velo junior track club.

But while Adam pursued a road career with amateur teams in France, Simon joined the British Cycling Academy programme in 2010 and later that year, at the age of only 18, was selected to ride at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, where he finished 45th in the road race.

Yates’s best early results came on the track, and included a gold in the Madison, with Daniel McLay, at the 2010 UCI Junior Track World Championships and, in 2013, a gold in the points race at the elite World Championships in Minsk, Belarus.

But, later in 2013, Yates started to show that his future would be in the discipline of road racing with some eye-catching results riding for domestic team 100% Me and the Great Britain road team.

The highlight came at the Tour de l’Avenir – a stage race considered the junior Tour de France – where he won two mountain stages, finishing just ahead of Adam on stage 5 into Morzine, and finished 10th overall on general classification.

The “buzz” around Yates continued on home soil at his second Tour of Britain appearance where he won a hilly stage 6 in Devon as part of a group that included Sir Bradley Wiggins and Nairo Quintana, eventually finishing third overall, just over a minute behind winner Wiggins.

It was enough to convince the Orica GreenEDGE team to offer contracts to both Yates brothers and an early success for Simon came in the Basque Country where he finished 12th overall at the Vuelta al Pais Vasco.

A broken collarbone in the Tour of Turkey temporarily halted his debut professional season but a strong showing at the Tour of Slovenia, where he won the young rider classification, earned Yates a shock call-up for his first Tour de France despite only having five days’ notice. The Tour started in Yorkshire and Yates featured briefly in two breakaways before being withdrawn after stage 15.

Yates was back at the Tour in 2015 after a strong early season in which he recorded top ten finishes on general classification at the Tour of the Basque Country, Tour de Romandie and Criterium du Dauphine, where he also won best young rider competition.

For the 2015 Tour, Simon lined up alongside Adam for Orica GreenEDGE and came in eighth on stage 3 at the famous Mur de Huy climb before finishing 11th on stage 20, at the top of the even more legendary Alpe d’Huez.

Vuelta victory

The 2016 season saw Yates concentrate on La Vuelta, the Spanish Grand Tour, and saw him win his first major one-day race, the prestigious Basque race the Prueba Villafranca de Ordizia in July.

At the Vuelta, he escaped from a breakaway group to win stage 6 into Luintra by 20 seconds from Luis Leon Sanchez, his first Grand Tour stage victory and the first by either Yates brother.

The win also allowed Yates to finish sixth on general classification and prepare for a 2017 season in which he would ride both the Tour de France and Vuelta for his team.

Yates warmed up for his objectives well, winning a stage at Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie in April, where he finished second on general classification, just 21 seconds behind winner Richie Porte – his highest finish at a UCI WorldTour stage race to that point.

At the Tour de France, three top-ten stage finishes allowed him to finish in seventh place overall, just 6:14 behind British winner Chris Froome, and repeat the feat of his brother from 12 months earlier by winning the young rider classification.

Although the 2017 Vuelta apparently brought little in terms of results, Yates was gaining valuable experience in Grand Tours and would return to Spain with a vengeance 12 months later, when he joined the elite list of British riders to have won a Grand Tour.

With his team now branded as Mitchelton-Scott, Yates announced a Giro d’Italia-Vuelta double target for 2018 and warmed up for the former by almost winning Paris-Nice, holding the lead after a victory on the penultimate stage 7 only to be overtaken by Marc Soler, who beat him into second by four seconds on the final stage in Nice.

But a win on a hilly stage at the Volta a Catalunya justified Yates’s position as joint team leader with Esteban Chaves for the Giro where he turned in the race of his life to that point, taking the leader’s jersey after finishing second behind Chaves on stage 6 at the top of Mount Etna.

Yates’s brilliant form in Italy continued with three further stages wins and he held the race lead – the maglia rosa – for 12 consecutive days before finally running out of form on two consecutive mountain stages 19 and 20, which saw him drop out of the top 20 in general classification.

But Yates had demonstrated he could compete with the very best stage racers in the world and he would prove it spectacularly in Spain in September where he entered La Vuelta as his team’s leader, supported by his brother.

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