Sir Dave Brailsford believes that the young Briton Adam Yates should try to maintain his high overall position in the general classification of the Tour de France rather than devoting his attention to stage wins, as was previously the plan for him and his Orica-BikeExchange team. Yates, who is 23 and competing in his second Tour de France, went into the rest day in Andorra lying second overall, just 16sec behind the double winner Chris Froome, and wearing the white jersey of best under-25 rider.
“I hope he tries to hang on to the podium,” the Team Sky head said when asked what he would advise Yates to do. “I know he came in and was talking about stage wins, but it’s obvious he’s a terrific talent, that he’s a general classification contender. At that age unless you go all the way and find out what it’s like and start to learn, you’re not going to get to a point where you can step up and win. So I think he should continue racing as hard as he can for three weeks, test himself and see how he gets on.
“I don’t think if he drops off a little he should sit up and go for stage wins. It’s a terrific performance. He’s riding at a fantastic level and hopefully he can sustain it.” Albeit with a double negative, Brailsford agreed that Yates has the potential to win the Tour in future: “You can’t say he can’t be the next British Tour winner. It’s the first rest day, we’ve done the Pyrenees, he’s second overall, if that was a French or a Spanish rider they’d be jumping up and down about it.”
Brailsford and Froome spoke with one voice when asked whether they were surprised by the domination of British cyclists in the opening phase of this year’s Tour. British cyclists are in first and second position overall, have five stage wins – one for Froome, one for Steve Cummings and three for Mark Cavendish – and of the four classification jerseys, three are held by British riders, while Cavendish’s grip on the green points jersey has been supplemented with some strong sprinting from newcomer Dan McLay. “It’s not a fluke,” Froome said.
Brailsford said: “If you look how far British cycling has come in the last few years, there has been a plan there, a structure. There have been years of investment since 1997; Britain has invested heavily in the lower ranks, in development pathways. It doesn’t happen overnight, Britain has been brave enough to invest in sport and it’s paying dividends. We’re not brilliant at politics at the moment but we’re doing well in sport.”
Geraint Thomas said he felt that the Irishman Dan Martin – the nephew of the 1987 Tour winner Stephen Roche and the son of former British international cyclist Neil Martin – who went into the rest day third overall, could stand a better chance of finishing higher up the standings than Yates. Martin, who is 29 and was born in Birmingham, has ridden the Tour three times, finishing in the 30s overall, while his best Grand Tour placing to date is seventh in the 2014 Vuelta a España.
“You’d put more money on Dan staying [in his overall position] than Adam maybe, just because Adam is younger and hasn’t ridden many Grand Tours,” Thomas said. “If I had to bet on one of [Yates] and Dan falling away it would be [Yates] because of his age and experience. Adam is young; he may have gone really deep these last three days and to keep doing that is tough. Dan has been around longer, [although] there’s no reason to doubt either of them really. For sure Adam is a future Tour winner.”
Thomas added that because of his mixed fortunes in the opening week, he has put his personal ambition of finishing high up the standings on hold. He fell on the opening stage, bruising his ribs, lost time on day two in Cherbourg, and then lost further time on Saturday’s stage to Luchon after opting to wait with Alberto Contador when they lost ground rather than riding hard and potentially bringing the Spaniard back to the leaders.
“The crash knocked me back, I lost a bit of time, then staying with Contador that day cost me a minute and a half,” said Thomas, who lies 16th at 3min 20sec. “That’s not ideal, so I’m not thinking about it any more; if I hadn’t had that crash and was in the top 10 you’d think about it, but it’s over three minutes now.”
