‘A bit tricky’ as Adam Yates co-leads UAE Team Emirates in Vuelta a España after helping Pogačar win Tour de France

Adam Yates has never been one to beat around the bush, and less than a month after the Briton helped UAE Team Emirates teammate Tadej Pogačar win the Tour de France, he was upbeat about tackling the Vuelta a España and looking out for his own GC chances in Spain and being realistic about what he could achieve.

“It’s less pressure here in the Vuelta, because for one thing we don’t know the level we’re at,” Yates told Cyclingnews during the countdown to the Lisbon start where he’ll be co-leading UAE Team Emirates alongside home rider João Almeida.

“We’ve not really had time to prepare and do a training camp. And in training you can have good numbers but then in racing you never know.

“Between the Giro and the Tour they had that extra week, but between the Tour and Vuelta there's not even four weeks this time round. Maybe the guys who have had specific training plans for here, who didn't do the Tour, are at a slight advantage. So it's going to be tricky.

“In any case, we’ll get a bit of a glimpse as to how people are going in Saturday's time trial and then stage 4” - the first summit finish of the 2024 race - “we’ll really begin to see what’s going to happen.”

With so little time between one Grand Tour and the next, Yates said, he went on holiday for just one week after finishing in Nice, then did two weeks training at home in Andorra “and that was it".

“My house there isn’t really at altitude, it’s not that high up, but the roads and training were good, anyway, even if it was a bit warmer than I’d have liked. But I did the best I could and then we’ll see how good what I did turns out to be here.”

The relatively easy first week of the Vuelta compared to the Tour de France could help the 32-year-old ride back into something approaching more consolidated top form without facing too many challenges in the meantime. But apart from the summit finish on stage 4 and a deceptively tough trek through the sierras of south-west Spain on stage 6, “the main problem in this first part could well be the heat", he said.

“It’s boiling hot even now,” he pointed out, talking to Cyclingnews on Friday afternoon, when the temperatures were hitting the mid-to-high 30s Celsius in Lisbon. “I’ve seen the forecasts for the whole first week, that’s going to be tough. So we’ll do our best, take it day by day and try not to make any mistakes.”

His best result in the Vuelta a España to date was in 2021, when he placed fourth, and Yates has done the Tour-Vuelta double once before, too, back in 2018. But perhaps the only thing in common with his 2018 Tour-Vuelta experiences and the Adam Yates of 2024 was that in one of those two Grand Tours six years ago, he was also helping a teammate triumph overall.

“That was a long time ago back when I was with GreenEdge,” Yates recalled. “It was when Simon [Yates' brother and then teammate at GreenEdge - Ed.] won the Vuelta, so that was a little bit different.

“I’d done California, won a stage in the Dauphine, but then we had a change of equipment just before the Tour and that downgrade affected me a lot in the race.

“Then we changed back to the first sponsor and obviously Simon managed to finish off the job in the Vuelta. The first week in the race, I had a bit of a holiday and then I was helping him out in a couple of stages in Andorra in the third week to complete the job.”

Climbers plan to work together

Fast forward six years and after Adam Yates and Almeida helped Pogačar win another Grand Tour this July, the two will have their own GC chances in the Vuelta a España. Rather than easing through the first week in Portugal and across southern Spain like in 2018, then, this time round Yates will be finding himself in the limelight alongside his Portuguese teammate and co-leader.

“We worked really well together in the Tour de Suisse [which Yates won ahead of Almeida - Ed.] and although obviously we had different roles in the Tour, we did really good work there too," the Briton told a press conference on Friday.

"In general we have different climbing styles, but they complement each other. I like to attack quite early, while João goes at his own pace and squeezes at the end. It depends a lot on who’s pulling on the climb, but we’ve shown we can work well together and for sure we’ll do it again in this race.

“When it comes to expectations, we don’t have a placing we’re really aiming for, we just want to do our best and the result will be the result. We’re in good shape, we’ve shown that all year. So if one of us can be up there and fight for the win, that’d be fantastic.

“If we have a small problem about which of us is going to win, I don't think that’s a problem at all,” Almeida added in the same press conference. “We just have to focus on other contenders.”

At least initially when it comes to those rivals, the key point of reference will be three-time winner Primož Roglič, the two said, and that's even though the Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe leader has said that he is still in pain after his Tour de France crash and lingering injuries. However, neither Yates nor Almeida were overly convinced that the Slovenian was being wholly truthful about his underlying condition.

“He always says he’s at 80% and then he kills you for a minute or a minute and a half,” was Yates' reaction when told about Roglic’s worries. “For sure he’ll be good. I don’t think he’d be here if he wasn’t.” 

"Whenever you have small talk with Primož in the races, he says ‘Oh I’m not so good’," Almeida concurred, "And then he wins the stage.”

Regardless of Roglic's condition, Almeida is very motivated, in any case, by what he said was “likely the only time in my career a Grand Tour will start in my home country. The support is already amazing so I imagine the next few days are going to be crazy, too. I’m super grateful for it all.”

A victory at this Vuelta would be the first Grand Tour win of Almeida's career.

“We’ve not had the best kind of preparation but I’m in good shape and we are feeling confident. We are going to do everything we can to go for the win and we have a great team to support us, we have many cards to play. Anything can happen and we'll just control what we can control and push as hard as we can, see where that gets us."

The most impressive result of all, of course, would be if either Yates or Almeida won the Vuelta a España outright, enabling UAE Team Emirates to follow Visma’s 2023 tracks and claim all three Grand Tours in a single season.

“I mean, it would be a nice goal, no? It’s easy on paper, but not so easy in real life. Maybe it’d be more easy if Tadej was here,” he added with a laugh.

“No, we’re under a bit of pressure to win, but in the end we’ll do our best and it’s not enough, it’s not enough. We’ll try in every stage to do what we can, and hopefully in Madrid we can be on the top step.”

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