Simon Yates Finds Glory on Finestre with Giro d'Italia Victory

An emotional comeback

In the most exciting stage of the most exciting Grand Tour in recent memory, Yates’s long solo ride up the most difficult climb in the race (18.5 km @ 9.2% with ramps up to 14%, and including 7 km of gravel) gave him the second Grand Tour victory of his career and probably the best day in his life on as bike. So important was his victory over that mountain that the usually taciturn Yates broke down and cried after the finish.

His reaction was understandable. At the start of stage 19 of the 2018 Giro, he had led the GC by 28 seconds over Tom Dumoulin and 3:22 over Chris Froome, but he cracked trying to follow Froome on the Finistre and finished the stage nearly 40 minutes behind the four-time Tour de France winner, a stinging memory that he has now laid to rest.

“Once the parcours was released, I always had it in the back of my mind that maybe I could come here and close the chapter,” the still tearful 32-year-old Briton told TNT Sports after the stage. “Maybe not to take the pink jersey and the race, but at least win the stage win or something. To try and show myself the way I know I can do, and to pull it off. I have to thank the guys, the team. They believed in me and even during the stage they were saying, ‘Just give it a try,’ and I did it in the end.”

He went on to say, “I’m not really an emotional person, but even coming over the finish line, I couldn’t hold back the tears. It’s something I’ve worked towards throughout my career, year after year, and I’ve had a lot of setbacks. I finally managed to pull it off.”

Though he won the race with his heart and with his legs – he rode the fastest ever ascent in history of the Finestre, 59:22 – he also had plenty of help, especially from Wout van Aert, who waited for Yates on the descent from the Finestre and then helped him add more than 2 minutes to his advantage over del Toro and Carapaz by leading him down the mountain, across the valley and halfway up the final climb to the finish line at Sestriere (16.3 km @ 3.8%).

How to lose a Grand Tour without really trying

And there was the unwitting aid of his main rivals, Carapaz and, especially, del Toro. The decisive battle for the race leader’s maglia rosa, or pink jersey, was kicked off by Carapaz not far from the foot of the climb. He was followed by del Toro, and the two of them rode off. Yates waited before commencing his chase and eventually, in his calm, measured style, caught them. He then attacked the pair three times, and was always reeled in. But on his fourth attack, Carapaz and del Toro did not respond, allowing him to build a decent gap.

As the wily Ecuadorian and the 21-year-old Mexican tried to outthink each other, the gap to Yates vacillated between 8 and 20 seconds – until del Toro made his first fatal mistake: he refused to help Carapaz ride in pursuit. The Ecuadorian called his bluff and slowed down, trying to coax his rival into taking up the chase. By the time del Toro finally assumed his responsibility as race leader and started working, Yates was near the summit and was already the virtual race leader. Then van Aert joined him and added more pressure on the pursuers.

Zobrazit příspěvek na Instagramu

Příspěvek sdílený Giro d’Italia (@giroditalia)

But del Toro’s own goals didn’t stop there because when he and Carapaz reached the valley, he again refused to work with his rival. And this time, the EF Education leader simply put on the brakes, as a way of telling del Toro, “If you don’t want to win this race, then neither do I.” One has to question why del Toro preferred losing the race to helping Carapaz. And one also has to question the decision of the UAE brain trust not to order del Toro to ride as hard as his legs allowed in pursuit of the pink jersey. As a result, he and Carapaz crossed the finish line 5:13 behind Yates.

And the mind games between del Toro and Carapaz continued after the stage, when the Ecuadorian said, “In the end, he lost the Giro. I think he didn’t know how to ride well, and in the end, the smartest guy won.” Del Toro replied by basically admitting he had been racing against Carapaz. “At the beginning of the Finestre, he wanted to crack everybody, and I just showed he can’t do that,” he said. “I wanted to be smart on the climb and not go crazy. I knew it would last an hour. I didn’t want to push 1,000 watts and then stop, like I knew would have happened. That’s why I paced myself.”

He went on to explain: “Simon came up and I know he has experience and that he’d ride steady and smart. I think I could have stayed with him, but I knew I had to mark Carapaz because he was the closest to me in GC. Yates was third, and Richie was second, so Richie needed to follow him. I had 1:20 on Simon and so I could let him go a bit. I told Richard that I wouldn’t work so that he could attack and drop me on the last climb. He told me he wouldn’t ride, and I said, ‘Okay.’ Everyone then saw what happened.”

When del Toro said that he was afraid of being dropped “on the last climb” and that he “knew” he would stop if he pushed himself, he basically admitted that he didn’t have the legs to beat Carapaz by working with him. That is the only possible – the only sane – explanation, that he and the team knew he couldn’t defend his lead if he did his share of the work on the climb and therefore would probably crack and finish third or worse. So the decision was made to sit on Carapaz’s wheel and outsprint him at the finish, while hoping that no one else would beat them. The team never expected Yates to be as strong as he was and didn’t have a Plan B when he rode away. Whatever the explanation, UAE’s strategy will go down in history with other great tactical failures, such as Napoleon’s at Waterloo.

Yates’s victory also marks a triumphant return to form for Visma–Lease a Bike, which went through a long period of frustration and failure following the injuries suffered by Jonas Vingegaard and van Aert in the spring of last year. They got their tactics spot on and are now enjoying some redemption as well. Visma’s Olav Kooij won the bunch sprint of Sunday’s final stage in Rome, his second stage win of the race. This success will give the team a huge boost of confidence heading into the Tour of France, which starts on July 5 in the French city of Lille.