Simon Yates has announced his retirement from professional cycling with immediate effect.
The reigning Giro d’Italia champion made the unexpected announcement just days after he was published in Visma-Lease a Bike’s 2026 kit. In a statement published on his Instagram account and the team website, he wrote that “this may come as a surprise to many, but it is not a decision I have made lightly.
“I have been thinking about it for a long time, and it now feels like the right moment to step away from the sport.
“I am deeply proud of what I have managed to achieve and equally grateful for the lessons that came with it. While the victories will always stand out, the harder days and setbacks were just as important. They taught me resilience and patience, and made the successes mean even more.
“I step away from professional cycling with deep pride and a sense of peace. This chapter has given me more than I ever imagined. Memories and moments that will stay with me long after the racing ends and for whatever comes next.”
The news comes just weeks after Yates appeared at the route presentation for the 2026 Giro d’Italia where he spoke of his desire to return to the race with the number 1 dossard, though he added the decision was ultimately up to the team.
Along with his twin-brother Adam, 33-year-old Yates started his career at Orica GreenEdge in 2014, making his Tour de France debut that same year. After missing the 2016 Tour de France due to a doping ban, for which his team took “complete responsibility” for “an administrative error”, he returned at the Vuelta a España where he won a stage and finished 6th overall. The following year he succeeded Adam in winning the white jersey of best young rider at the Tour de France.
2018 was arguably the defining year of Yates’ career. After riding aggressively in the opening half of the Giro d’Italia, winning three stages, Yates held a three minute lead heading into the final week. But his race collapsed on stage 18 as he was dropped on the Colle delle Finestre and lost more than 30 minutes as Chris Froome won after an 80km solo attack. Froome won the race, whilst Yates eventually finished 21st. He recovered however to win the Vuelta a España later that year, riding a more conservative race that saw him loan the leader’s jersey away and claiming only one stage win from a reduced uphill finish.
The subsequent years saw more leadership expectations thrust on Yates, which resulted in another Grand Tour podium at the Giro in 2021, and a career best fourth overall at the Tour de France in 2023, one place behind Adam after the brothers finished first and second on the opening stage in Bilbao.
But there was also inconsistency, with crashes and illness causing him to finish only one of five Grand Tours between 2020 and 2022. Despite being offered further leadership roles, he reportedly took a pay cut to join Visma-Lease a Bike this time last year, adding his engine to Jonas Vingegaard’s mountain train.
His place at the Giro d’Italia this year was not as a singular team leader, with the stage-hunting ambitions of Olav Kooij and Wout van Aert soaking up the pressure and deflecting attention from their strongest climber. But Yates continued to climb the general classificiation as the race progressed, moving up to sixth after the iconic gravel stage to Siena (won by Van Aert), then onto the podium by the final week.
Then Stage 20 happened, returning to the Finestre that ended his Giro seven years prior. After Richard Carapaz isolated maglia rosa Isaac Del Toro at the bottom of the climb, Yates bided his time before bridging across. Then, after three earlier accelerations he broke free, taking advantage of his rivals’ cat and mouse antics to extend his margin until he summitted the iconic climb in the virtual race lead. Joining up with Van Aert from the breakaway on the descent, his rivals threw in the towel, and Yates achieved the most extraordinary redemptive arc the sport has seen in recent times, winning the race overall by nearly four minutes.
A subsequent stage at the Tour de France six weeks later, en route to helping Vingegaard finish second overall, was his eleventh Grand Tour stage and has proven to be his final professional victory.
Accompanying his retirement announcement, Visma’s Head of Racing Grischa Niermann said “It is a shame that he is stopping now, but he does so at an absolute high point. Simon was an exceptional climber and general classification rider who always delivered when it mattered most.
“In the Giro, he peaked at a moment when almost no one expected him to be able to win anymore, which truly characterises him as a rider.”
His retirement leaves a gap in Visma’s climbing roster, and another gap in British Cycling at the elite level, following the retirements of Geraint Thomas and Lizzie Deignan last year. Straight-talking, though never as popular as his contemporaries, he’ll be remembered for that day in May when he, in his own words, “could close the chapter” on his worst day on the bike, with his very best. Creating some images for the ages.
7 thoughts on “Simon Yates announces retirement with immediate effect”
Zebra wrote:
Well he’s held young rider, climber, sprinter, combined and GC jerseys at Grand Tours, if Stokes’ groin doesn’t improve we’ve definitely got room for an all-rounder.
That’s a shame, but all the
That’s a shame, but all the best to him and for his future.
To be honest, I hardly care
To be honest, I hardly care about who is riding these days. After getting excited about Floyd Landis powering away up that climb and thinking I was witnessing history, only to be let down, I’m aftaid I just can’t get excited any more. We don’t know what were looking at and maybe never did. I still put the tours on, but it’s more muzak than opera to me.
We’d have to be stupid to think that it’s clean.
Ozfoz wrote:
I know it sounds wise after the event but I can clearly remember watching that stage and immediately thinking he was on dope, and my phone was buzzing with texts from other cycling fans saying the same thing. Obviously we can never say with 100% surety that cycling is clean (although my gut feeling is that with the amount of data available and the level of rider scrutiny it’s probably at least as clean now as it has been at any point in my lifetime) but continuing to doubt the riders because there are things that happened decades ago seems to be like refusing to watch baseball because the 1919 World Series was fixed.
Also, without wishing to sound as if I don’t care about doping, because I do, whether there is dope or not it’s still a magnificent spectacle, there is no drug on earth that can help people descend at 100 km/h.
Rendel Harris wrote:
There might be…
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-020-01023-w
Nah, professional bike riders
Nah, professional bike riders – the good descenders, at least – got rid of that years ago. As Mark Cavendish said after a particularly insane descent into Nice in the rain a few Tours back, “You know that bit of your mind that says don’t do this, it’s stupid? Yeah, we don’t have that.”
Happened to come across a great quote from Sean Kelly this weekend on the same theme, actually: he was asked how on earth he had kept his nerve for the near-kamikaze descent of the Poggio in ’92 that allowed him to catch Moreno Argentin and take his second Milan-San Remo: “Well, the important thing about descending is not to think about the hospital while you’re doing it.”
Well yes, but if you’re
Well yes, but if you’re talking about taking drugs to do it, then by definition you’re talking about those who haven’t managed to do that – i.e. the ones who at the moment are getting dropped on the descents, or aren’t making it as professionals at all because of their descending issues.