Adam Yates secured his first overall title since joining UAE Team Emirates this season when he finished safely in the bunch on the final stage of the Tour de Romandie, which concluded with a bunch sprint won by Movistar’s Fernando Gaviria. Having moved into the yellow jersey with victory on Saturday’s ‘queen’ stage to the ski station of Thyon 2000, the 30-year-old Briton finished the race 19 seconds clear of Gaviria’s team-mate Matteo Jorgenson, with Bahrain Victorious’ Damiano Caruso third and the hugely promising 20-year-old Briton Max Poole (Team DSM) in fourth.
‘Credit to the guys, they controlled the race perfectly today,’ said Yates, who was making his debut in the Swiss stage race and joked that he was delighted to end it with a 100% winning record. ‘It’s been a perfect week for us with two stage wins and the overall, so we can’t ask for much more,' he added, his mountain triumph coming the day after team-mate Juan Ayuso had been quickest in the 19km time trial.
Romandie was Yates’s first competitive outing since March’s Volta a Catalunya, where he was set back by injuries sustained in an opening day crash. ‘Winning here was the plan after the little break that I had that gave me a chance to recover from my crash in Catalunya,’ said the UAE climber. ‘We knew that there was a big mountain day that I could win. It’s easier said than done and much harder to put all of the pieces together, but in the end we managed to do it.’
Yates will now turn his attention to preparing for the Tour de France, where he will step back into a support role for two-time champion Tadej Pogačar. ‘I’ll have a small break now and then maybe do some altitude, and then step by step we’ll make my condition a little bit better and hopefully be ready for the big objective at the Tour de France,’ he said.
Gaviria, who has a one-year contract with Movistar after leaving UAE in the off-season, clinched his second victory for the Spanish team with a canny piece of sprinting. With 300 metres remaining, the Colombian accelerated to the front going into a sweeping right-hand bend and came out of it with a clear lead. The victory, his first in a WorldTour race since the 2021 Tour of Poland, took him to 51 career successes, level with Nairo Quintana as the leading Colombian winner of all time.
