'If nothing goes wrong, Tadej is boss’ - Adam Yates on the Tour de France and life with Pogacar

They say making a Grand Tour podium for the first time is a breakthrough moment for any rider's career. But as far as Adam Yates is concerned, the short-term consequences of taking third in the Tour de France last July are not going to be overly noticeable.

“I don’t think so,” Yates says when asked if he will now enjoy protected status in July after standing alongside teammate Tadej Pogačar in last year’s Paris podium. 

“Maybe you know more than me, but as far as I’m aware my job is the same. I came to this team with the idea of helping Tadej win the Tour and last year we got reasonably close: we had two guys on the podium, we won four stages, only one guy was better than us...”

When it comes to deciding the UAE Team Emirates hierarchy at the 2024 Tour, Yates dismisses as irrelevant the fact that he was presented by manager Mauro Gianetti as a co-leader alongside Pogačar prior to last year's race. As he sees it, that 'co-leadership'  line was simply a smoke-screen.

“That was just to ease a bit of pressure on Tadej: he’d had a heavy spring, the injury, but we all knew in training camp that he was good. It was just to be safe, a back-up plan, so if nothing goes wrong this time, he’s the boss.”

Mid-to-long term, though, in the light of what he achieved last July, Yates does view his options as a stage racer as being much higher. But if gunning for the Tour is not a possibility, he might be up for a GC battle as soon as August 2024 – or if not then, perhaps in May 2025.

“Obviously I would like to be a leader in a Grand Tour in my own right – maybe in the Vuelta if I come out of the Tour well. If I feel good and fresh, the team say they’ll give me an opportunity, though there are a lot of guys on the team who can do a good GC result, so we’ll have to see.”

Warming to his point, he adds, “Maybe I can do a different programme one year: I’ve done the Tour many times, but only done the Giro once and the Vuelta quite a few times. So maybe next year I could ask for the Giro and have my opportunity there.”

But it’s not only Yates’ third place overall in the Tour, the stage 1 win and his race lead for four days that contribute to his current upbeat stance about his 2024 season and beyond.

Prior to July he clinched overall victory in the Tour de Romandie, second in the Criterium du Dauphiné and a summit finish stage win and third place in the UAE Tour. In the second half of the season, he was the fastest of the pack at the GP de Montréal. Even if you take the Tour de France out of equation, 2023 was still his best season to date, and with wins from February to September to boot.

Planning ahead

That greater degree of overall success was in large part due to a much more even race condition across the season and an absence of bad luck, he says, although he still had a bad crash on the opening stage of the Volta a Catalunya which knocked him out of that particular overall battle. On top of that, there was a much higher degree of pre-season planning and a better-established team hierarchy with UAE,  something which had played its part in getting him to switch teams in the first place.

"They already had a plan for me, and they knew what to do with me," Yates told Cyclingnews back in late 2022.

"For me that’s the most important thing, having a plan, knowing what they want from me and knowing that they will trust me and support me."

Fast forward 12 months and – sitting in the same hotel as in December 2022 and just a few yards from where he gave that interview – Yates agrees that planning was key in his success in 2023.

“For me, yes, that makes a difference when you set out a plan from the beginning and you know what your goals are and what your job is in the team,” he says. 

“I knew from the start I’d have to be at a high level at the Tour and I’d have to work towards that and in the other smaller races and the one-days, I’d have my opportunity. If it’s the same this next year as it was last year, that’d work well.”

“Beyond that, I was very consistent over the year, which was a nice change for me. I didn’t get sick, I didn’t have too many major injuries, even when I had that bad crash in Catalunya I lost time overall but could manage to recover from that.”

Given how well he did last year, it seems logical his race programme will not be overly different in the first part of the year, with the Tour of Oman a possible variation, “depending on the course and stuff”, then likely preceding a return to the UAE Tour for a second year running.

“If it works, are you going to change that much?” Yates asked rhetorically. “After that, it’s pretty similar - Tirreno, Basque Country.…honestly I don’t really mind as long as the team trust me and gives me enough time to recover between races. And it doesn't matter which race the team lets me go to, as long it suits me a little bit.”

The 2024 plan

Another boost to his 2024 campaign is that, as he points out, there’s been no change of team so no need for an adaption process to equipment or kit, and that’s allowing him to feel “even a little bit fitter than last year, so no complaints there.” 

It all begs the question as to whether he feels he has unfinished business with the UAE Tour, as perhaps it was the one race which he knows he can win – as he did in 2020 – but where it did not work out as well as expected in 2023.

For UAE Team Emirates, too, as their home race and the biggest Middle Eastern event by far, the UAE Tour is a major target. Yates prefers to keep things in perspective, though, saying “It’s not really a race that suits me down to the ground, there are lots of flat stages and normally a pan-flat time trial."

"But I like it there, it’s good fun, the roads are super-nice and the hotels are really good. So it’s a good way of getting the season started, and it sets me up well for the rest of the year.”

It goes without saying that the Tour de France route is far more variable than the somewhat wearily predictable format of each version of the UAE Tour, and this year it features an unusually ultra-tough first week for a second year running. Yates says the current Tour organisers' predilection for switching things around so much early on in their event is definitely something he appreciates – this year, at least.

“I like it when it’s hard at the beginning because there are fewer chances of crashes,” he argues. “This year in Bilbao, it was really good, the fans were really respectful. Back in 2018 or 2019 we started somewhere in the north of France and there were four or five crashes every day.”

By riding the Giro d'Italia, Pogačar will take a very different approach to that tough opening weeks in 2024. 

"Personally, it doesn’t change things," Yates says. "It was also the same last year in a way, when Tadej was injured we didn’t know if he would be there at 100%. For me, I just have to be the best I can in July. I’m there to do my job and if I can help, to try to be sure it’ll be at the highest level.”

One step higher

A fairly impulsive rider himself when it comes to attacking rather than being overly calculating, it seems Yates has found a kindred spirit in Pogačar, and the Slovenian’s success rate, he says, makes it even more appealling to back him on the road.

“Tadej is super-easy to work with, he just wants to go full gas, even when it's not really appropriate. It's just his way and as a result, he wins a lot of races,” he says. "When he does that, then it’s really easy to get behind him.”

Yates is more than convinced, too, that Pogačar is right to try for the Giro and Tour double in one year. In terms of physical resilience, he argues, given Slovenian star proved last year he could come back from a bad injury and has “shown he’s a real tough character, then why not?” 

When it comes to winning the races all year round, he adds, Pogačar is in a field of his own. The combination could prove very effective come May.

While Yates will be Pogačar's key supporting man in the mountains for a second year running, the UAE Team Emirates squad has again gained in firepower. Yates' contribution in 2023, in terms of results at least, very much the biggest addition to date, but the squad seems determined to raise the stakes even higher in 2024, by sending two of their other Grand Tour podium finishers – Juan Ayuso and João Almeida – to France in July, as well as another potential GC challenger,  new signing Pavel Sivakov. 

Asked if this deeper field of stage racing specialists means that UAE are planning to put four riders in the fight against Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease A Bike), Yates plays a straight bat. 

“You tell me," he says, before explaining how he views the increased depth to the UAE Team Emirates squad for July.

"It shows we want to go there with a super-strong team, but what we do depends on our level and the level of the guys we want to beat. Only one guy was better than us last year, but that’s sport. Next year’s another year, so we’ll try and go one step higher.”

Just keep going

This brings the interview back to how Yates managed to take such a big step up himself in 2023 in the Tour. Always a believer in getting to the point as quickly as possible in conversations, his answer is straightforward. 

“When I had my opportunity I took it with both hand," he says. "So again, I keep saying the same thing, but I didn’t get sick or injured too badly and when you do all these things, everything works and comes together.

"Even the year before, I knew I could do a season like this. It’s just the year before, because of one thing or another, whether it was I got sick or injured,  something happened at the wrong time. But those are things you can’t help, they're part of sport.”

There is life on two wheels before and after the Tour, of course. But given how much hinges around July, Yates is still unwilling to confirm whether he’ll take part in the Vuelta at this early juncture. Instead, he suggests it would be wisest to see what kind of condition he is in after July before committing to what would be his first time to ride Grand Tours in a single season since 2018. 

However, when it comes to the relatively lower overall physical demands of a one-day race, even one as challenging as the World Championships, Yates is notably more upbeat about his chances of having a go.

“It’s not like it’s super-hilly this year, the course is more like Canada with no real climbs as such but at the end of the day it’s nearly 5,000 metres of climbing,” he points out.

 “I’ve not spoken to [GB team coach Matt] Brammier yet but it could well be a good course for me.”

Whatever is in store for Yates in 2024 after such a dream 2023 year, consistency will once again be key, he insists, as well as an absence of bad luck. The 31-year-old also warns that each season, the bar keeps on being set that bit higher.

“This year in the Tour, the level was so high and with the watts we had to do just to be in the front, a few years ago you’d have won quite easily,” he says. “So it’s tricky.

“But that’s one of those things you have to deal with: it's all about working all year to be better and better and next year could be different again.

“I’ve got a lot of confidence in myself, it was only five or six years ago that a bike rider would tend to peak between 28 and 32, and it’s only recently that the younger guys have started to come through to win early – whether that’s because of nutrition or because they’re going to altitude camps when they’re 16 years old.

“But if I’m getting better myself every year, then why not keep going?”