New swagger has Simon Yates looking to Giro d’Italia with total confidence

A supremely confident Simon Yates, the winner of cycling’s last Grand Tour, the Vuelta a España, starts the Giro d’Italia in Bologna on Saturday hellbent on revenge for his humiliation in the race a year ago.

“I’ve been thinking about this race for almost 12 months now,” Yates said. “I’ve been very dedicated, very focused about it. If I was in my rivals’ position, I would be scared. I would be shitting myself.”

As he targets back-to-back Grand Tour wins, there is a new swagger to Yates that is far removed from the somewhat hesitant rider of a year ago, who had yet to contend for victory in Italy, France or Spain. Asked who he considered to be the Giro favourite, a stony-faced Yates immediately pointed to his chest and replied: “Me.”

Yates was closing on a memorable win last year when he endured a total and abject collapse in form in the Italian Alps and could only watch helplessly as Chris Froome climbed clear to final victory in Rome. When Froome attacked Yates’s overall lead, halfway up the gravel hairpins of the Colle delle Finestre, the Lancastrian had no response.

Success in last September’s Vuelta eased that pain but the disappointment of last spring may be the motivation that fuels his drive in this year’s race, which begins with an 8km individual time trial to the San Luca sanctuary, overlooking Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna.

“Twelve months ago, going in, we didn’t know Simon was going to be at the level he was,” Matt White, Yates’s sports director at Mitchelton-Scott said. “Simon had had some good results but he’d never raced in Italy before. With last year’s Giro and the Vuelta now under our belt, we have a much clearer idea where we are going in this year’s Giro.”

Unlike the 2017 Giro winner, Tom Dumoulin, who after the drawing of lots for team leaders has opted to start the time trial early to avoid predicted evening thunderstorms, Yates starts the opening stage third from last, at 7.45pm local time. “The weather is just a prediction,” he said. “Nobody really knows. Now I will also know the exact times of my rivals so I can also work around that and plan a strategy.”

The 2019 Giro route rewards both mountain climbers such as Yates and the former champion Vincenzo Nibali, and time trial specialists such as Dumoulin and the hotly tipped Primoz Roglic. There are almost 60km of individual time trials, which does not favour Yates particularly, but set against that are six summit finishes, and a daunting final week that includes a run of mountain stages and legendary climbs such as the Gavia, Mortirolo, Rolle and Manghen.

If any hard lessons had been learned from last year’s swashbuckling performance, in which Yates won three stages before his disastrous collapse, it is to keep his powder dry until the decisive moments. “This year’s Giro lends itself to being conservative in the beginning,” Yates said. “The hardest part of the race is at the end. We have an idea how to approach these races now.”

But as was the case in 2017, when 40 seconds separated the top three riders and Dumoulin clinched overall victory in a cliffhanger finale, the race may be decided in the final day’s individual time trial which finishes at the Roman amphitheatre in Verona. It is likely that Yates will have to watch four rivals: Dumoulin, Roglic, Nibali and the Colombian Miguel Ángel López, a distant third overall to Froome and Dumoulin a year ago. But the Giro is usually so volatile and unpredictable that he will need to be vigilant throughout.

Yet White was hesitant to cite Roglic, Yates’s most obvious rival, as a genuine Giro contender. “Roglic is so green,” he said. “Most guys by the time they get to 29, 30, they might race a little bit smarter because of their experience but he’s like a 23 or 24-year-old, he’s only been in the sport five years.”

“Roglic will be hard to dislodge. He won a one-week race, the Tour of Romandie, where there’s one key mountain stage and one time trial, but there are seven or eight key stages here.”

As for his own rider, White stated that Yates was “100%” a changed man. “He came here to win and he knows how to do it. It’s a very competitive field but if it is anything less than a podium finish we’ll be disappointed. And so will he.”

source: theguardian.com