Yates was not originally in the team’s selection and had travelled back to Europe after the two Canadian World Tour races, the Grands Prix de Québec and Montréal. However, after Thomas ruled himself out of the championships due to fatigue Yates was given the call to return to North America.
The British team suffered another blow on Friday when Mark Cavendish removed himself from the line-up after he confirmed that he had not recovered from the shoulder injury that ended his Tour of Britain. The former World Champion had only been able to ride on a home trainer after the incident. With Chris Froome already out through injury Great Britain have been searching for another rider to come into the team.
It’s understood that Simon Yates is not one of them, and that the Orica-GreenEdge rider will remain in Europe and prepare fully for the Tour of Lombardy.
"Adam is coming in for Geraint but we don’t know for sure who will come in for Mark Cavendish,” team head coach Rod Ellingworth told Cyclingnews.
“At this stage it doesn’t look like Simon Yates will come over. His original plan was to get ready for Lombardy and we were fine with that and he also wasn’t too sure how he was going to be feeling after the Tour de France, so it doesn’t look like he will be coming over but we’re not 100 per cent sure who will come over. Adam Blythe might be available though.
“It’s an unfortunate situation, to lose three guys in Froome, Cavendish and Geraint. When we made the selections I remember talking to the selection panel and telling them that between naming the selection and the Worlds that there were 30 days of racing, so we’ve had a bit of bad luck. Cavendish only made his final decision yesterday and we’ve tried to give him as long as we could. I think that if the race had been in Europe it might have been different but with the travel, and let's face it, a WorldTour event the week after.”
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Great Britain have two riders in the men’s individual time trial in Alex Dowsett and Stephen Cummings. The team must finish with one rider inside the top ten in order to guarantee two slots in the time trial at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
