Tour de France – Simon Yates could do Giro d’Italia-Tour double in 2022, says Team BikeExchange's Matt White
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Updated 16/11/2021 at 11:31 GMT
Matt White, Team BikeExchange's sport director, believes that their British rider Simon Yates could compete at the 2022 Giro d'Italia in an attempt to win the Grand Tour, and could then move onto the Tour de France in order to secure stage wins in France. Yates has had decent showings in both races in recent years.
LE CREUSOT, FRANCE - JULY 02: Simon Yates of The United Kingdom and Team BikeExchange at arrival during the 108th Tour de France 2021, Stage 7 a 249,1km km stage from Vierzon to Le Creusot 369m / @LeTour / #TDF2021 / on July 02, 2021 in Le Creusot, France
Image credit: Getty Images
Simon Yates could compete in both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France next year.
The Team BikeExchange rider may attempt to win the Giro outright but would then expect to win individual stages as his target in France.
Cycling News reports that the team are still waiting to see the full route of the 2022 Vuelta, which will be released in December, before factoring that into their plans.
Matt White, the team’s sport director, told the website: “I really like the route but we’re still waiting on the details and we want to see the GPX files [containing race data] but if there’s one steady feature to the Giro it’s that it’s always got a brutal back end.
“You know what you get with the Giro. It’s always the most demanding of the three Grand Tours when you talk about the metres of climbing and some of the stages are huge, and you’re talking about 5,000 metres of climbing on some days. The number getting thrown around right now is that there’s 51,000m of climbing in the entire race.
We’re preparing for a tough race.
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The 29-year-old British rider competed in both Grand Tours in 2019 and 2021. In 2019, he took eighth in the Giro and then followed it up with two stages at the Tour. In 2021, he finished third in the Giro before a disappointing Tour ended with a crash on Stage 13.
“It’s very much a climbers race but even when the Giro has had about 50-60km of time trialling in it, it’s still been a race for the climbers, realistically,” White continued.
“The best climbers, at the end of the day, rise to the top in the Giro because the stages are just so demanding.
“We’re still discussing it at the moment but it’s a race that he loves, and he likes the Tour de France too.
"It’s highly likely that if we see him at the Giro then we’ll see him at the Tour as well but we still need to discuss things and of course we’ve still not seen the Vuelta route yet. We’re in the process of deciding our plans but it’s certainly a nice route for the climbers.”
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