‘The wink that said let’s go’ - Yates brothers race in sync at Tour de France

Adam Yates deliberates when asked a question about his brother and Tour de France rival, Simon Yates.  

If the fraternal twins were to swap kits, would anyone in their respective teams, UAE Team Emirates and Jayco-Alula, be able to tell? 

“Ahhhhhhhhhh,” Adam says with contemplation. 

“Maybe. He’s a little bit skinnier than me right now, so maybe, but I don’t know.” 

At Jayco-Alula, former Paris-Roubaix winner turned sports director Mathew Hayman seems equally unsure if he could tell Simon from Adam. 

“I often start telling a story about when we were doing a race together and Adam’s like, ‘Nah, that was my brother,” Hayman says. 

“I find it difficult. I have twins myself, but one is a boy and the other is a girl, so I am able to tell them apart.” 

Tongue-in-cheek, you could call it a potential marginal gain, though one neither have needed at this Tour, with both Adam and Simon set to celebrate career-best finishes. 

The Yates brothers will finish in Paris on Sunday, as close as they started it, with Adam placed third and Simon fourth on the general classification. The pair duked it out for honours on stage one, with Adam taking the win and the first yellow jersey of the race. 

In the mountains on various stages they would, despite their clear, contrasting team strategies, somehow find each other in the melee of media, fans, team staff, bikes, cameras and cars at the finish to roll down to the paddock together. 

On Saturday’s penultimate stage in the Vosges, the Yates twins appeared on the road together again, riding almost in unison to bridge to the lead group containing Adam’s teammate Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard (Jumbo-Visma) and Felix Gall (AG2R Citroen). 

Riding out of the saddle at the same time, both shifted, left, then right, left, then right, as if being pulled by the same length of string controlled by the same puppeteer. Identical twins even in the biggest moment of the stage.

Simon’s focus was on a stage win and moving up to fourth overall, Adam’s focus was to support Pogacar, who would win the stage and finish the Tour runner-up, and defend his third place. 

There was business on the road, but also brotherly love, not sibling rivalry. 

Simon’s face was covered in light brown dirt, an airway strip still fixed across the bridge of his nose, when he dismounted his bike outside his team bus at the finish. 

He shook slightly, maybe from the effort of the day, the effort of three weeks of hard and fast racing, or maybe the breeze that had turned cool. 

“It was quite lucky, well lucky, it was nice to have him [Adam] there because I couldn’t close the gap to the front guys by myself, so we collaborated,” Simon says. 

“And then we had a chance for the stage.” 

There wasn’t much chat between the pair when they found each other on the road. 

“Not more than a wink, just to say let’s go, no messing around,” Simon adds, explaining the twins' instant understanding of each other's thoughts. 

Adam elaborated on their symbiosis. 

“The first stage we got away together, and I managed to beat him to the line. Today he jumped in front of me, and he was one of the few people I had to mark along with Bilbao and Hindley and Carlos Rodriguez,” Adam said during his special podium place press conference. 

“When he went, I had to jump across and towards the top he actually started to drop me. I had to hang on, and over the top, we weren’t too far away from the front so he asked me for help, and I said, ‘Yeah sure, as long as you don’t drop me, I’ll do a few turns and we can come to the front.' That’s how it goes.” 

Simon missed out on the stage win, unable to match Pogacar’s burst of vengeful speed, but he moved up one place on the general classification. 

“I’ve been through a period of a lot of bad luck and some injury and illnesses in Grand Tours,” he said. “This was not a completely free of bad luck Grand Tour, but I gave my best every day so I’m happy.” 

Adam impresses everyone at UAE Team Emirates

For Adam, it was around this time last year that he started talking to UAE Team Emirates management about transferring to the squad after two seasons at Ineos Grenadiers.

It was a prosperous move that has delivered him his first podium result in what is his career 12th Grand Tour.

Adam Yates always insisted that he was at the Tour in support of Pogacar, even though the team considered him a co-leader given the Slovenian’s interrupted preparation due to a wrist injury.

“Their whole idea for me was to come to the Tour and be last man with Tadej. It’s worked well this year and managed to get a podium out of it. Whether I get a Grand Tour elsewhere, that’s not up for me to decide,” he says.

“I didn’t have to pull too much. I think that was always the aim.

“It’s always a pleasure working with Tadej. He’s super chilled.

“It’s for me the most enjoyable Grand Tour I’ve done. And yeah, we didn’t win but we can be pretty happy with the performance, and next year we’ll come back stronger.”

UAE Team Emirates chief operating officer Andrea Agostini was impressed with what he saw from his new signing, which like the bottle of fine red wine the Yates brothers intend to share after the Tour, is seemingly getting better with age.

“He’s going to be a co-leader for several of the big tours for the next season also because he showed he can fight for the final victory,” Agostini said.

“He’s an amazing rider, Adam. He showed he can do more than he did in the past. He followed all the indications of our staff in terms of performance, in terms of training, nutrition and it showed that he had something to improve for sure.

“From the beginning of the year his level is a really high-performance level so never far from the podium, he won the Tour of Romandie, he won the first stage here, he got the yellow jersey, he’s fighting for the podium. Adam is a good bet for us and we’re really happy.

“He's integrated with Tadej, with the team, he’s an amazing rider and also an amazing person. Maybe a little bit shy, but he has good humour also with the guys and the mood is really good inside the bus despite everything.

“One of our strong points is the ambience in the team, and he’s integrated into it so well.”