In all the fuss about Geraint Thomas' latest bid to use the Giro d'Italia to prove he really can fight for a Grand Tour, it sometimes feels as if another British rider's battle to go for the GC in the Giro this May has been overshadowed. The ironic thing is, of course, that in terms of GC contention, Adam Yates (Orica-Scott) has already been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. Or in Yates' case, some nice white maillots as the 2016 Tour's Best Young Rider.
If you discount team prizes, Yates is one of just three currently active British riders together with Chris Froome (Sky) and Mark Cavendish (Dimension Data) to have made it onto the race's final podium in Paris – or the final podium of any Grand Tour for that matter. Yet, despite Yates' breakthrough fourth-place ride in the Tour, such is the range of Orica-Scott's GC talent that Yates' brother Simon, sixth in the 2016 Vuelta, and Giro and Vuelta podium finisher Esteban Chaves will be taking on the Tour in 2017. Adam, meanwhile, is looking to make his mark in the one Grand Tour neither he nor Simon have raced before: the Giro d'Italia.
It's a sign of his youth – he's still only 24 – that Yates first memory of the Giro is, he tells Cyclingnews, "2009 and the Rome time trial over the cobbles, when [overall winner Denis] Menchov crashed, a big dramatic finish. Before that, I don't really remember much."
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Even so, eight years of watching the Giro d'Italia on and off since then has been ample time for Yates to reach his own conclusions about how it is raced, particularly after he started doing reconnaissance for the 2017 Giro d'Itala. That recon largely consisted of watching old race videos of the Giro's big climbs and being an armchair critic: "Sitting on my arse on the sofa and saying 'what's he doing attacking there?'" as he puts it with a grin.
But he's reached some important conclusions, too. Just as Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) recently told sister-publication Procycling, the far less structured, haphazard style of racing that seems to flourish at the Giro compared to the Tour couldn't fail to strike home – although he is guarded about whether that is to his advantage.
"Well, we'll find out, won't we?" Yates replies when asked if he liked that kind of more anarchic racing in real life as well as from a couch potato's point of view. "But I think it could suit me. In the Tour, I did a good ride, I was pretty consistent, but the guys that were ahead of me were just better than me. There was never any opportunity to attack that comes with the kind of carnage you don't get when the racing is more controlled, like in the Tour.
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