'The whole stage went how I expected it to go' – Simon Yates's Finestre hour and Giro d'Italia triumph unpacked

This feature originally appeared in our Cycling Weekly's Review of the Year on 18 December 2025. Subscribe now and never miss an issue.

It was one of the most amazing redemption stories in recent cycling history. Seven years after cracking on the same climb and losing the Giro d’Italia with two days remaining, Simon Yates returned to the Colle delle Finestre and, this time, rode himself into the lead on the penultimate stage. The symmetry was striking: the place that once cost him a Grand Tour became the setting for his eventual triumph in that same race.

Yates later admitted that he had, in fact, anticipated the way the stage might unfold. “You won’t believe me, but… the whole stage went how I expected it to go,” he recently said at Rouleur Live.

With Isaac Del Toro and Richard Carapaz first and second on GC, separated by 43 seconds and preoccupied with each other, Yates seized the moment. While they marked each other’s moves, he was able to ride clear and take a win shaped as much by patience and experience as by superior climbing ability.

To understand the magnitude and uniqueness of what Yates accomplished, we must first rewind a couple of years to the prequel, then return to the events that set the stage for ‘Finestre With Avengeance’. Back in 2018, Yates was a swashbuckling 25-year-old, attacking repeatedly as he chased stage victories. In doing so, he was an antidote to the formulaic GC riding style that had been established by Team Sky.

Arguably a forerunner to Tadej Pogačar, Yates was altogether more exciting than what had gone before. At that year’s Giro d’Italia, he took pink on stage six, then claimed three stage victories in just seven days. Going into the final rest day, he held a lead of 2:11 over Tom Dumoulin and appeared to be in control. But then things fell apart.

Yates lost over a minute to Dumoulin and Chris Froome in the stage 16 time trial, then ceded a further 30 seconds on stage 18’s summit finish. A day later, on the Colle delle Finestre, a part-gravel climb, a suffering (and ill, it would later turn out) Yates was ambushed by a marauding Froome.

The more experienced Brit attacked 80km out and held on to complete an incredible victory, while Yates lost a whopping 39 minutes and tumbled from first to 21st in the standings. It was a crushing defeat.

Though Yates bounced back to win that year’s Vuelta a España – his first Grand Tour triumph – the scars of Finestre never fully healed. Four times he returned to the Corsa Rosa, achieving third-place and a spot on the podium in 2021, but the win continued to elude him. A change of team at the end of 2024, from Jayco-AlUla to Visma-Lease a Bike, provided the platform to finally avenge 2018's bitter disappointment.

Anyone's race

The 2025 Giro was notable for the openness of its field of competitors. There were at least a dozen riders capable of achieving a podium. When Primož Roglič and Juan Ayuso, the two leading favourites, started to falter in the second week, the door swung open for a multitude of possible winners.

Del Toro, only 21, took the lead on stage nine, and by stage 14 it was clear that it was a three-way fight between the young Mexican, the steady-away Yates and the forever-attacking Carapaz. By stage 20 it had stretched out further and appeared to be, at most, a two-horse race; Del Toro’s lead over Carapaz was 43 seconds, with Yates 38 seconds back in third.

On the massage table the night before, Yates and his Visma sports director Marc Reef discussed their strategy.

“What we noticed when Simon was second behind Del Toro in the GC [for three stages] was that Del Toro was really, really focused on Simon. Every move [Simon] did, Del Toro went with him, and the rest had more freedom,” Reef told CW.

“When Carapaz jumped over Simon in the GC, Del Toro’s focus switched to Carapaz. We suspected this could give Simon more freedom on the Finestre – Del Toro now saw Carapaz as his closest competitor and would focus on him.”

Yates agreed. “I need these guys to look at each other. I need a gap,” Yates recalled saying to Reef. “It was my only chance. I needed that moment of hesitation.” And that’s exactly what happened.

Fire on the Finestre

At the foot of the Finestre – the day’s penultimate climb, ahead of the finish at Sestrière – Carapaz’s EF Education-EasyPost team opted to take the race to Del Toro and UAE Team Emirates-XRG.

“We didn't want Del Toro and UAE to control everything like they had the day before when he always had four or five teammates with him,” Carapaz later told The Athletic. “So the plan on the Finestre was to break the race in the first kilometre, to try everything and make them play their cards. To isolate Del Toro was our first objective. And, well, we did that, didn’t we? There was chaos where Del Toro, me, and Yates were left alone from the third kilometre onwards.”

Yates, who initially couldn’t keep pace with Carapaz and Del Toro after the former’s first attack, and found himself 20 seconds adrift. The Brit found his way back up to the duo, now fixated on one another, then awaited the team’s prompt to make his move.

“It was important that Simon felt the trust from us that he had the freedom to find his moment,” said Reef. Five kilometres into the 18km climb, Yates attacked. He was reeled back – once, twice and then again. But the fourth time he disappeared up the road, with Del Toro appearing to let him go.

Fabio Baldato, the UAE sports director, explained their tactics: “Our race strategy was for Isaac to mark Carapaz because we thought he’d attack hard.” Del Toro, speaking to GCN Español a few months later, confirmed that plan: “The one who had shown the legs and the intention was Carapaz, and on the radio they were telling me to be more concerned with him, so I focused more on him.”

This played perfectly into Visma’s hands, with Yates given free rein to go clear. Carapaz repeatedly tried to shake Del Toro, but the younger of the two stuck to his wheel obdurately. “He was so obsessed with me,” Carapaz said. Baldato attempted to alert the young Mexican: “Halfway up the climb, we tried to tell and encourage Isaac to think about Simon, too.” It went unheeded.

At the top of the Finestre, Yates had a lead of 1:37, giving him a virtual GC lead of 16 seconds. Del Toro could still have won the Giro, but Visma had an ace card up their sleeve: Wout van Aert was up the road as a satellite rider.

“Wout is always the guy who puts his hand up to help,” Reef said. “When you make a plan like that, he always takes on the responsibility to be an important teammate. We knew we needed to have someone like Wout over the climb to support Simon.”

Yates joined Van Aert with 19.6km remaining, and it was effectively game over. “Wout being there, I think it cracked the other two,” Yates said. “It wasn't just his physical power, it was the mental aspect.” Del Toro claimed that “due to the stressful situation, I forgot that there was a rider, Van Aert, up the road. It was a momentary tactical error [of] forgetting the details.”

Remembering the moment he found out that Yates had Van Aert in support, Carapaz said: “Isaac came and asked me for help. I told him: ‘Man, the race is over now, I can’t do anything more. I’m sorry’.”

Full circle

As Yates and Van Aert pedalled furiously to the line, Del Toro and Carapaz sat up, admitting defeat. Yates turned a 1:21 deficit into a 3:56 winning margin, becoming only the second British man after Froome to win two Grand Tours. Was it won by his initiative, or had Del Toro thrown it away?

The UAE inquest is still ongoing, with Del Toro and his team at odds as to who was to blame. “When two people argue, someone else wins,” Baldato sighed.

For Yates, the post-race debate about who erred and who excelled is largely irrelevant. What matters is that, on the mountain that once ended his Giro dream, he finally brought the story full circle.

“Once the route was released, I always had in the back of mind that I could come here [Finestre] and close the chapter,” he said. The boy from Bury is now permanently tied to the climb that shaped both his greatest disappointment and his defining triumph. “Nothing will ever beat that, not just in cycling, but in my whole life.”