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UAE Emirates dominate Tour de Suisse as team get ready to back Pogačar’s Giro-Tour double bid
Adam Yates left the Tour de Suisse not only as a WorldTour stage race victor for a fourth time, but as a potential favourite for the Tour de France. The British rider, along with his UAE Team Emirates team-mate João Almeida, dominated the eight-stage race last week. The pair will now head to the Tour in the support of their team leader, Tadej Pogačar, but ready to step up should the opportunity present itself.
It is the second year in a row that Yates has won a WorldTour stage race in Switzerland, and the 31year-old looked head and shoulders above everyone – save Almeida – in the Alps. The man from Bury won two of the eight stages, finishing second on a further three, with Almeida the victor on two of those occasions.
Last year, Yates travelled to the Tour off the back of second at the Critérium du Dauphiné, and duly won the opening stage. To be in Florence having triumphed at the Tour de Suisse will give him hope of more success.
Having finished third at last year’s Tour, there isn’t much more he can do, especially with Pogačarwho dominated the Giro d’Italia in Mayalso lining up, but he will be there both to help, and wait in the wings as an understudy de luxe should any chances arise.
The friendly intra-team clash between Almeida and Yates came to a head on the final-day time trial, a discipline which would usually favour the former over the latter. And so it turned out, but with a steep climb thrown in, Yates was in his element and ended up conceding just eight seconds to the Portuguese rider, who won the day.
“About 2km to go, I wasn’t sure if I could do it,” Yates said. “Obviously, I had the two time checks with João in front of me and I knew he was going to accelerate a little bit there in the end.
“Actually, I just couldn’t accelerate, I was already over the limit so I just tried to hold the pace and thankfully it was enough,” Yates continued, as he tried to catch his breath. “It was such a hard climb, but one thing I had in the back of my mind for a while was the 2019 Tirreno-Adriatico, where I lost the TT on the last day by one second, and this had lived rent-free in my head for many years, so it’s good to win a TT like this.”
For UA
