Simon Yates’s peak performance puts Giro d’Italia in his grasp

The Lancastrian, winner of the Vuelta a España in 2018, avenged past bitter disappointment in the Giro by blowing apart the defences of 21-year-old race-leader Isaac Del Toro, of Mexico, on the monstrous climb of the Colle delle Finestre.

Barring any unexpected mishaps, Yates will seal his overall win in Rome in today’s closing showcase stage.

In a pulsating finale to the three-week race, a driven Yates and his Visma-Lease a Bike team turned the narrative upside down and laid to rest the ghost of his crushing defeat by Chris Froome on the same climb seven years ago. “Once the Giro route was released, I had in the back of my mind that maybe I could come here and take the jersey, or at least the stage, and try and show myself, the way I can do,” Yates said.

In an audacious lone move at the bottom of the Finestre climb, Yates profited from the rivalry between Del Toro and closest challenger, Richard Carapaz, of the EF Education EasyPost team, to forge ahead and overcome his deficit to the leader’s pink jersey.

With Del Toro distanced, Carapaz refusing to chase, and the gap ­growing ever bigger, the Giro was suddenly in play.

Yates moved decisively into the race lead on the road, as, behind, his rivals continued to play poker.

Overwhelmed after crossing the finish line, the 32-year-old burst into uncontrollable sobbing and was still tearful when he spoke to the media, 45 minutes later.

“To pull it off, I really didn’t believe,” Yates said. “The guys in the team did and even during the stage they were saying: ‘Believe in yourself.’ I wanted to close the chapter, but I never really truly believed until the very last moment.”

The chapter he needed to close was a painful one. In 2018, Yates had won four stages and, with a near three-and-a-half-minute lead on Froome, seemed on the verge of a deserved final ­overall victory in Rome, when he arrived at the foot of the same climb, the Finestre, just two days from the Giro’s finish.

But a violent solo attack from Froome on the gravel hairpins left Yates trailing, far behind on the mountainside. The trauma of the Finestre provoked an abject collapse in his form that saw him lose almost 40 minutes on the stage, and watch his potential victory slip away.

It was a shattering defeat that has haunted him since. Eight years on, however, it was a different story.

Yesterday, Yates’s solo raid on the mammoth haul up the unpaved climb left Del Toro ­unexpectedly ­isolated, as his teammates slipped behind.

Carapaz, meanwhile, even though he could have won the race himself, steadfastly and doggedly refused to assist the Mexican in the pursuit of Yates.

As the tactical stalemate between the two rivals dragged on, Yates ­committed fully to his task on the steep hairpins and moved further ahead, before joining forces with his teammate Wout Van Aert to hammer home his advantage.

“It’s such a great effort of Simon to go all in from so far,” Van Aert said. “Once I was in the breakaway and we had such an advantage, I knew I had a small chance to make it over the Finestre and of course I am happy I was valuable, but it’s the effort of the whole team.”

As it turned out, just one day had made all the difference to Visma’s team togetherness. On Friday night, after the stage to Champoluc, Yates had seemed angry with his team, saying: “We had a ­completely different plan than what we ended up doing. I don’t want to say anything more about it.” Twenty-four hours later, the ­situation had radically changed.

“Simon had the legs today and as a team we did the right things,” his sports director, Marc Reef, said.

At the finish in Sestriere, Yates had relegated UAE’s hapless young Mexican to second place in the overall classification, by three minutes and 56 seconds. Del Toro had led Yates by one minute 21 seconds at the start of the day.

Yates’s win was one of the most remarkable denouements in ­modern Grand Tour racing and it left the sport’s powerhouse team, UAE Emirates, sponsors of Tadej Pogačar and Visma-Lease a Bike’s great rivals, looking indecisive and shambolic.

There’s no doubt that, with the Tour de France looming, UAE’s ­capitulation will give some hope to those hoping to find a chink in Pogačar’s armour. After what ­happened on the climb of the Finestre, they will be more optimistic.

As the final week of the Giro started, UAE had held all the cards with, at one point, four riders in the top 10 in the overall standings.

But as the mountain stages wore on, they increasingly struggled to assert themselves, although Del Toro held on to the race lead into the Giro’s climactic climbs.

What is more puzzling, however, is how incapable his UAE Team Emirates management were of rescuing the situation, with the Giro about to be lost on the road to Sestriere.

These are the same managers that have guided Pogačar to an almost unassailable dominance in the Tour de France and other major races.

For Yates and his team, the ­reversal of fortunes, after a spring lacking as many major wins as usual, will be a timely boost to morale, just one month before the Tour begins in Lille.

For UAE Emirates, it will be a ­stinging, high-profile defeat. They will be keen to rectify any weaknesses, starting with next weekend’s Criterium du Dauphine, in which Pogačar will face Jonas Vingegaard, Visma’s past ­double Tour winner.

Meanwhile, Adam Yates, Del Toro’s teammate and Simon’s twin brother, tried to put a brave face on the ­outcome. “We did a good race all the three weeks,” he said. “It’s Isaac’s first Giro, he’s got many good years ahead of him. We have to take it on the chin and accept how it is.”

Photograph by Dario Belingheri/Getty Images