Slumped against the fencing of the finish area at Courchevel, his maillot open to his chest and facing a semi-circle of waiting media, Simon Yates (Team Jayco AluUla) needed a good few minutes to recover after taking second in the toughest stage of the Tour de France.
His first description of the 5,000-plus metres of climbing that he’d just completed to the team staff looking after him at the stage 17 finish was a single word - ‘wicked’ - that neatly summed up just how harsh the stage had been. But it did no justice to the courage of his ride and how close Yates had come to victory.
For kilometre after agonising kilometre, Yates had engaged in an all-out pursuit of stage leader Felix Gall (AG2R Citroën), perhaps seeking some kind of sporting revenge for the second place he took in the opening day’s racing in Bilbao.
It was not to be and for all Simon Yates has moved up into fifth on GC, his description of that achievement at the end of the interview he gave to the waiting media - “ pretty irrelevant, really” - summed up how badly he’d wanted a stage win that eluded him by just 34 seconds.
Part of an early, 34-rider break alongside Jayco AIUIa teammates Lawson Craddock and Chris Harper, Craddock was instrumental in keeping the break’s hopes of staying away in the first couple of hours, and then Harper provided strong support all the way up the slopes of the Col de la Loze.
After Gall attacked, Yates managed to bring the gap down to 15 seconds at one point, but finally, the third Tour stage victory of his career proved impossible to achieve.
“In the end, I couldn’t catch him,” Yates said. “I was hoping to catch him on the descent [off the Loze] but I was pretty cross-eyed so it was hard even to navigate the course. That’s how it goes.
“We really wanted to go after the stage today, and the guys did really well. Lawson drove hard all day and then Chris Harper really raised the pace in the finale. They did a great job.”
As for his tactics on the Loze, whether he was more worried about an unleashed Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) attacking behind and sweeping past rider after rider on the break or if he was thinking about when was the best time to attack, he said “a bit of both”.
“You never know how fast those guys are coming from behind so that was always in the back of my mind. Chris did a fantastic job on the final part of the climb when they really started to raise the pace from behind.
“I didn’t know the climb, I don’t know if that’d change anything, but I was very wary of the altitude, so I tried to pace myself and then go from there.”
Yates sportingly congratulated Gall for his performance, calling it “a great ride by him” and while accepting that it was a shame he couldn’t get the win, he concluded simply that “that’s how it goes.” Yates also said he was satisfied with how he had tackled the stage, saying “it was a good ride”.
However, at least in the heat of recent battle, Yates did not seem overly convinced that one side-effect of his break and second place, a rise into the top five of the Tour’s GC, was of major significance. When one reporter called it a “crumb of comfort” Yates answered: “I wasn’t looking for that today though,” and that in terms of the GC battle, pointed out “I think I must be at nearly 15 minutes [so] it’s pretty irrelevant now.”
Yates' 11th Grand Tour stage win may have to wait for now, but all the evidence points to the Briton coming into peak condition in the Tour’s third week. Saturday’s relentless series of climbs through the Vosges is yet to come, and could still see the Jayco AIUIa man battling one last time in the 2023 Tour for a breakaway victory.
