The sudden retirement: How will Simon Yates be remembered?
Andy McGrath analyses the two-time Grand Tour winner's career
Simon Yates announcing his retirement on Wednesday afternoon was a fitting bombshell for a British star who has made a habit of making striking moves from under the radar in recent years.
The 33-year-old goes out on a high, months after a Tour de France stage win and as the reigning Giro d’Italia champion. He is the first reigning male Grand Tour champion to bow out of the sport since Lance Armstrong in 2005.
The timing suggests a sudden change of heart from Yates. He attended the Giro route presentation last month, indicating he “would love to come back” and Visma-Lease a Bike’s team’s December training camp; he was part of their team meetings and planning for 2026. This was seemingly a bolt from the blue for the team too, with whom he had a contract.
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Evidently, retirement was on Yates’s mind. “It is not a decision I have made lightly. I have been thinking about it for a long time,” he wrote in an announcement posted on Instagram.
The real Simon Yates
Leaving the sport with loads of fanfare and build-up would not have been very Simon Yates. His longtime Orica GreenEDGE team manager Matt White called him a “no frills” champion who never cared about being famous, just racing his bike.
I spent an entire day with Yates for Rouleur in February 2019. I went out to Spain’s Sierra Nevada, apprehensive about getting good quotes from this phlegmatic-seeming character who held his cards close to his chest. I came back with one of the most interesting interviews of my career and almost four hours of conversation on my dictaphone.
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