When UAE Team Emirates general manager Mauro Gianetti announced that Tadej Pogačar and Adam Yates would enter the 2023 Tour de France as co-leaders, it was taken with a large dose of salt. Kidology is always a large rife in the weeks running up to the Grand Départ, with the top contenders bending over backwards to explain why their rivals, rather than themselves, are the ones to watch. Nobody wants the pressure of being perceived as the favourite, and so the comments from the UAE Team Emirates camp just seemed like a classic deflection tactic to downplay Pogačar’s hype.
Sure, there were legitimate doubts about Pogačar’s fitness following the injuries sustained in his crash at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, from which he only just returned to racing at the Slovenian national championships, and Gianetti did cite concerns that his wrist wasn’t yet completely recovered as a reason for the co-leadership status. But that didn’t convince anybody that Pogačar really was anything other than the outright leader.
In light of what happened today, perhaps they were telling the truth after all. The UAE Team Emirates rider who crossed the finish line in Bilbao with victory aloft in celebration was not Pogačar, but rather Yates, who was granted some freedom in the finale to go out on the attack, and then work with his twin Simon before taking the stage victory in a familial two-up sprint.
Initially, it seemed UAE were indeed all riding with only Pogačar’s fate in mind. On the decisive final climb of Côte de Pike, they set a fierce pace with the Slovenian in tow. First Felix Großschartner and then Yates himself shredding the peloton to bits. Only defending champion Jonas Vingegaard and surprise of the day Victor Lafay were able to follow Yates, who pulled off after a rapid 250-metre turn to allow Pogačar to attack. The action, it seemed, of a super-domestique and not a co-leader.
But when the impetus went out of the group after Vingegaard declined to take a turn, Yates bridged back up to them with a few other GC contenders (David Gaudu, Mattias Skjelmose, and his brother Simon), and what happened next was the first indication that the team are indeed trying a new double-headed approach. Rather than set the pace again for Pogačar, and inflict more damage on their GC rivals who had been dropped, Yates instead capitalised on the slowdown to fire himself up the road.
Then, when Adam was joined by his twin Simon, and he radioed…