Giro d'Italia: Yates comes through first multi-climb mountain stage in good shape

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Adam Yates (Orica-Scott) turned in a satisfyingly consistent performance on the Giro d'Italia's first major multiple-mountain stage on Wednesday, reacting without any difficulty to the late attacks by Vincenzo NIbali (Bahrain-Merida) and Thibaut Pinot (FDJ) on the last climb.

After swigging down a recovery drink at the finish in Bagno di Romagna – "it's a bit hot today," the Briton observed – Yates told Cyclingnews he had "got through without any problems."

"It was a pretty hard day out there overall, the pace was pretty much on all day," Yates pointed out, "but I got through it without any problems." The Briton finished 23rd on the day, on the same time as the rest of the pink jersey group.

Yates made a point of stopping and thanking teammate Rubén Plaza for getting in the break and keeping things under control for him ahead. "Rubén did a good job up there in the move on limiting our losses to [Andrey] Amador, he was the only one up there who was a threat on GC, so all in all it was a good day," he observed.

Yates disagreed that Movistar were trying to put the remainder of the peloton under pressure, rather the mountainous terrain made it almost inevitable all the major teams would have at least one rider in the break. "We've done the Blockhaus and Etna, but they were more just finishing climbs, this was the first mountain stage with multiple ascents.

"It wasn't just Movistar, pretty much everyone were happy to place somebody in the break. And we had Rubén, and he did a really good job."

For Yates, the next big mountain stage will be the summit finish to Oropa on Saturday. But in this first incursion into the mountains in northern Italy, stage 11 was a good start.