You can keep your yellow jerseys, SPOTY prizes, and podcasts – Simon Yates was a proper old-school British bike racer

Simon Yates was Britain’s greatest cyclist of the 1980s. Pro Cycling Stats may tell you otherwise, and the fact he only announced his retirement on Wednesday confuses things somewhat, but trust me on this one. Actually, Yates is also Britain’s top male cyclist of the 1970s. And the 90s, the 2000s too. Tom Simpson probably pips him to the 1960s, but you get my point.

For some reason, however, in the thousands of articles penned this week in the wake of the Bury rider’s shock retirement announcement, one word dominated: ‘underrated’. A Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España champion, one of only two British men to win more than one grand tour: underrated.

Unfortunately for Yates (not that he’ll care too much), the reason he’ll forever be lumbered with the underrated tag, and not remembered as a generational pioneering figure, like Simpson, or Robinson, or Millar, is simply because he turned pro in the 2010s. British cycling’s golden era.

> Simon Yates announces retirement with immediate effect

Case in point: in 2018, two British riders other than Chris Froome triumphed at that season’s grand tours, a momentous achievement for a nation geographically, historically, and culturally on the periphery of cycling’s European heartland. One of them, Geraint Thomas, retired to great fanfare in September in front of thousands of his adoring fans, in his home city, at the end of his home race.

The other, Yates, dropped his own retirement news out of the blue on a random Wednesday lunchtime in early January, on the eve of the new season. His post featured just a letter, outlining his decision to quit, and a photo of himself as a kid, sitting on a bench. It was Yates’ first foray onto Instagram for over a year.

Classic Simon Yates. Always understated, always on his own terms. Crowds? Pah, who needs ‘em? Lavish receptions? Not for me. One last race? Mate, I’m shattered.

Bury-born Yates – and his twin brother Adam (five minutes his junior) – turned pro in 2014. Simon, despite enjoying a more gradual climb to the sport’s summit, was the brother selected to ride that year’s Tour de France. Starting in Yorkshire, the 2014 Tour arguably represented the pinnacle of the ‘Roule Britannia’ period, when GB dominated the peloton, the public were out in force, and cyclists won SPOTY.

But the Yates twins felt like they belonged to another era entirely. During a decade of robotic Sky dominance, black jerseys, marginal gains, and mountain trains, they recalled a time when cycling was exotic, when the exploits of British riders on the continent were still fresh and groundbreaking, and only accessible through niche magazines and grainy highlights packages.

For starters, unlike a substantial portion of their peers, they didn’t spend their careers on the GB/Sky conveyor belt of talent, instead opting to turn pro with Aussie outfit Orica GreenEdge, where Simon stayed for all but his last two years in the peloton.

(I know, I know, Simon was part of the British Cycling Academy as an U23 and Adam eventually found his way to Ineos. But still, they could very easily have slotted into the Sky train at that time, destined for Richie Porte-style domestique duty. Instead they chose their own path, and flourished).

And unlike Sky’s band of burly rouleurs-turned-stage race phenomena, the Yates twins were pure climbers. More Robert Millar than Geraint Thomas. Simon’s grand tour wins, at the 2018 Vuelta and this year’s Giro, were based on excellence in the mountains and punchy uphill finishes, and strong, defensive, if unspectacular displays on the time trial bike – the antithesis of the Wiggins model.

He could still spring a surprise, mind you – that Giro TT win in Budapest in 2022 shocked everyone, including Mathieu van der Poel and Tom Dumoulin – but it was on the high ground where Yates came alive.

For 18 days in May 2018, he was as electric as a British rider has ever been at a grand tour, pure pink perfection. He attacked, seemingly at will. British professional cyclists didn’t attack in the 2010s, remember. Not at grand tours, not from distance, and not for the sheer hell of it anyway. It was against Brailsford’s Law.

And in a period when British dominance at the Tour de France was expected – and let’s face it, boring – Yates’ Giro ride that year felt like a rebirth, a new frontier, similar I imagine to how fans of a certain vintage must have felt when a spindly Scottish climber attacked in the mountains at the 1983 and ‘84 Tours.

Even his sudden, shocking collapse on the Colle delle Finestre, at the hands of arch Skybot Chris Froome, underlined how different he was. Yates’ 2018 Giro was a glorious failure, a throwback to Millar’s ‘stolen Vuelta’ of ’85 (in slightly less Machiavellian circumstances). And, of course, it made what happened seven years down the road all the sweeter.

When he righted the wrongs of that 2018 Giro, later the same year at the Vuelta and last May in Italy, with that staggering, poetic ‘don’t call it a redemption ride’ on the Finestre, Yates was more ruthless, more calculating, playing the waiting game, striking when the time was right.

But his attacking instincts never dimmed, earning him six Giro stages, three Tour stages, and two Vuelta stages when he was let off the GC leash.

Let’s face it, he never would have fit in at Sky. In the 2010s, the British squad bullied their way around the grand tours. Yates, on the other hand, was the perennial underdog, the plucky kid hiding in the back while the teams were being picked, before smashing one into the top corner from 25 yards.

At the Tour de France, Yates’ career best was fourth on GC, in 2023, following in the pioneering, exploratory wheel tracks of Millar and pre-Sky Wiggo – a proper British result at the Tour in my book. And one that, if it had occurred 15 years beforehand, would have sent the UK’s cycling press and fandom into ecstasy. Sport’s all about timing, I suppose.

Speaking of timing, Yates’ riding style was even anti-Sky, a throwback, constantly out of the saddle, a bouncing bomb straight out of the ‘80s. None of this seated, high-cadence modern, marginal gains nonsense for Yates.

The Bury man’s brush with the anti-doping authorities also had the whiff of the old school about it, an inconvenience swiftly forgotten about. He served a four-month ban in 2016 after testing positive for a drug found in his inhaler, GreenEdge put it down to an administrative error (though Yates, who denied even knowing he’d taken the substance, admitted the whole affair had left him close to quitting the sport altogether).

But back to that ‘underrated’ tag, for a moment. He may have retired without any fanfare, but Yates’ 2025 campaign means he achieves that rare thing of bowing out at the top of his sport, a reigning grand tour champion. However, that wasn’t enough to even earn the 33-year-old a nomination for this year’s Sports Personality of the Year award.

Perhaps more than timing, or the fact his biggest wins fell in cycling’s more hipster races, it was Yates’ personality – quiet, understated, thoughtful – which ensured he never cut through with the Great British public (that, and not winning the bloody Tour de France, of course).

He wasn’t the cheeky boy next door G, or the Mod King Wiggo. Yates was never going to draw the raffle numbers in Paris. I’d be shocked if he starts a podcast, or goes into management. But Simon Yates never followed the crowd, he did things his own way (sometimes with his twin bouncing beside him).

And in carving out his own, incredibly successful niche, during a period of unprecedented success for cycling in the UK, Yates bridged the gap between the old and the new, between the sterile Sky era and the roaring ‘20s, a throwback racer pointing the way forward for a new generation of attacking, exciting British talent.

After all, Oscar Onley finished fourth at last year’s Tour de France. That’s proper cycling heritage. That’s very Simon Yates.