Simon Yates confirms his Grand Tour plans for 2021
Simon Yates has confirmed his Grand Tour plans for the 2021 season, as he will target the Giro d’Italia for a fourth consecutive year.
Team BikeExchange
Australia | Team website
Photo: Team BikeExchange
Australia’s only top-level cycling team, Team BikeExchange have steadily evolved since making their debut in 2012. The team comprises both men’s and women’s line-ups, both competing in the UCI’s respective WorldTour calendars.
Initially, the men’s squad found success in the Classics, team time trials and opportunist stage wins, but have more recently nurtured rising Grand Tour contenders and the next generation of sprinters in the shape of Caleb Ewan.
Colombian Esteban Chaves and British twin brothers Simon Yates and Adam Yates have made a big impression on Grand Tours in the past few seasons with Adam leaving to join Ineos Grenadiers for 2021.
Chaves established himself as a serious contender during the 2016 Giro d’Italia, where he placed second overall and wore the maglia rosa for a spell. This was backed up with a third place in the Vuelta a España the same year.
Adam Yates ended the 2015 season with a win in the Clasica San Sebastian, and finished seventh overall in the 2016 Critérium du Dauphiné, earning himself a spot on the squad’s Tour team. He finished the 2016 Tour in fourth spot overall, and claiming the white jersey of best young rider.
Winning the UAE Tour in 2020 along with wearing the yellow jersey at the Tour de France briefly.
Adam and Simon Yates in the 2017 Vuelta a España. Photo: Yuzuru Sunada
Simon Yates’s season hit a setback in 2016 as he fell foul of the team omitting to submit a therapeutic use exemption certificate for an asthma drug, and he failed an anti-doping test at 2016 Paris-Nice.
He was suspended from competition for four months, ruling him out of the 2016 Tour, but took part in the 2016 Vuelta to finish sixth overall. The following year, he lined up for the Tour de France and placed seventh overall – also taking the best young rider classification, a year after his brother.
In 2018 Simon Yates won his first Grand Tour taking the overall at the Vuelta a España, becoming the first British rider outside of Ineos Grenadiers to win a GT.
Ewan has been developing as a major sprint force, and will have his chance to contest flat stages of the Tour de France for the first time in 2018 having already claimed stage wins in the other two Grand Tours – a stage of the Vuelta in 2015 and the Giro in 2017.
The squad changed its name to Team BikeExchange for the 2021 season in a rejig for the team.
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