'I’m not an emotional person, but I couldn’t hold back the tears' - Simon Yates writes his redemption arc story to seal Giro d'Italia victory on Colle delle Finestre

The oft-repeated cliché is that you couldn't write the script - that the action is too unbelievable to be predicted. The irony being, obviously, that most of the time it absolutely could be written; it's rare for something truly absurd or novel to happen.

It was a cliché uttered multiple times on TV on Saturday as Simon Yates stormed towards the pink jersey on stage 20 of the Giro d'Italia, after he attacked on the Colle delle Finestre and dropped his podium rivals. The same Colle delle Finestre where in 2018 Yates suffered on that year's stage 19 of the Giro, as Chris Froome flew to a famous victory.

However, you absolutely could and would write this script. Yates returning to the scene of his most infamous collapse, and turning it completely around was ripe for the page. It was real, though - the redemptive arc saw the Visma-Lease a Bike rider not just banish his demons, showing that he can succeed on the Finestre, but well and truly exorcise them. If you were writing a script for Yates before the Giro, the moment of triumph would, of course, come here. From pain to glory.

He wept tears of joy at the end of the race, barely believing the moment himself, but it was done. No one needs to remind him of his failure at the Giro anymore, instead his success. Script flipped.

“I’ve never ridden it since,” Yates said of the Finestre pre-race. “It’s a long, long way away and we’ll see how we get there, but for sure it will maybe be emotional to be back. It’s a moment in my career that’s ever present, let’s say. Let’s see what happens this time.” What happened will go down in cycling's history books.

"Once the route was released I always had in the back of my mind that I could come here and close a chapter, maybe not to take the jersey and the race, but at least a stage," he told TNT Sports post-stage. "[I wanted to] show myself the way I know I can do. To pull it off, I really didn’t believe. I have to thank the guys in my team because they really believed in me, even during the stage.

"[With] 200m to go, I was on the radio asking for the time gap, because I never truly believed until the very last moment, I’m speechless really."

"It’s still sinking in," he continued. "I’m not an emotional person, but I couldn’t hold back the tears. This is something I’ve worked towards throughout my career, year after year. There have been a lot of setbacks, so yeah, finally managed to pull it off."

At the start of stage 20, Yates trailed race leader Isaac del Toro (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) by 1:21, and second-placed Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) by 38 seconds. There had been barely a point across the three weeks where Yates had seemed this much better than the pair above him in the general classification; Del Toro looked steady, and Carapaz looked like the most likely to benefit from any cracks in the Mexican's armour. Yates had ridden a great Giro, but a podium would have been enough, and this is how it appeared to be settled.

He was not ready to accept this situation. After an initial Carapaz attack on the Finestre, covered by Del Toro, Yates moved up to the duo with about 40km to go of the stage, 10km to the top, and then moved off the front once, then a second time. It wasn't a vicious attack, like Carapaz has tried so many times at this race, but it was a solid, steady move. Del Toro and Carapaz watched each other, and occasionally came close to closing the gap, but it wasn't to be. The gap kept growing.

While the Spanish-speaking pair behind waited for each other to chase Yates, the Briton up the road just pushed on, and was in the virtual race lead as he crested the highest climb of this year's race. With the assistance of the ultimate domestique de luxe, Wout van Aert, in the valley between the Finestre and the final climb to Sestrière, the gap for Yates only extended, until it was at a level the man from Bury could only dream of.

"It’s incredible," Van Aert told Eurosport post-stage. "I don't think we thought about this this morning. Such a brave effort from Simon to go all in from so far. I love it when people are not racing for a place of honour. Chapeau to him.

"Once I was in the break and we had such an advantage I knew I had a chance to make it over the Finestre. Of course I’m happy that I’m valuable, but it’s an effort of the whole team."

Forget any recriminations over how Carapaz and Del Toro let the Giro slip out of their grasp, which seemed as much an issue of tactics as not having the legs, this was Yates' victory ride. By the end of the day, his lead was 3:56; he rode the Finestre in 59 minutes and 23 seconds, the fastest-ever time.

A lot has happened in the seven years since he last was in the race lead at the Giro, since he last pulled on the maglia rosa. Yates is now 32, and this is his first season as a professional at a team which isn't Jayco AlUla. A pandemic has come and gone, as have American presidents, and he has returned to redemption.

He won the Vuelta a España the year he narrowly lost the Giro, in 2018, and has since gone on to record solid results at multiple Grand Tours - third at the Giro in 2021, fourth at the Tour de France in 2023 - but this is the true vindication. Simon Yates, Giro d'Italia winner. He wrote the story.