Cautious Adam Yates glad to get ‘stressful day’ behind him after Tour de France team time trial

Adam Yates gladly put behind him a "stressful day" in the 2019 Tour de France, after the stage two team time trial in Brussels.

Yates's Mitchelton-Scott team lost 41 seconds to Jumbo-Visma, and only 21 seconds to Team Ineos.

"I think for all the teams it's a stressful day," Yates said after the stage.

"It's not easy to get eight guys coordinated and ready to go but throughout the years, we've done a good job at that. Today was another day through the motions. Tomorrow's another day."

Yates and Mitchelton-Scott won the Tirreno-Adriatico team time trial in March.

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Though they lost some time on stage two of the Tour de France 2019, they gained time on rivals like Richie Porte (Trek-Segafredo), Romain Bardet (Ag2r La Mondiale) and Nairo Quintana (Movistar).

"It's good to get through in one piece," he added. "We didn't lose a chunk of time, only a little bit."

Twin brother and team-mate Simon Yates drifted off the back of the TTT unit, after he had planned to lose time in the early stages so he would not have to think about the Tour overall and just focus on helping Adam win the race overall.

"I think as a team we can be happy with that [performance]," continued Yates. "As a team we would like to win, we would've like to take time out of some rivals.

"We got one [time trial] out of the way already, there is only one more, but it's not super long, which is great, and it is lumpier in the middle, similar to the Dauphiné time trial."

The first summit finish mountain stage comes on stage six, to La Planche des Belles Filles.

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"Yeah, pretty much, anything can happen in the first week, you can crash and lose a minute pretty easily," Yates said. "Once we get to the first mountain stage and get it out to the way, then we can start to see the picture more."

Yates now sits 51st at 51 seconds behind Mike Teunissen (Jumbo-Visma), the yellow jersey after two stages.