Simon Yates’s shock immediate retirement from cycling was something that had been on his mind ever since he won the Giro d’Italia, one of his longtime friends in the sport has revealed.
Owain Doull raced with Yates as a junior and the pair were also on British Cycling’s Academy back in 2012 and 2013. Though the pair had never been on the same road team in their WorldTour careers, they have maintained a friendship and were set to both ride for Visma-Lease a Bike in 2026, after Doull had made the switch from EF Education-EasyPost. That was until Yates announced his sudden departure from the sport just a few days into the year.
Speaking to Cycling Weekly at Visma’s winter training camp in eastern Spain this week, Doull said that unlike others he was “not massively” surprised by Yates’s decision, pointing to a conversation he had with him on the final day of the Giro last year.
“I was with him on the last stage of the Giro and I said congrats to him,” Doull recalled. “I said I would have preferred it if Richard [Carapaz, Doull’s then-EF teammate] had won but if I wanted anyone else to win it it would have been him so I was super happy for him.
“And he kind of said to me back then, ‘To be honest, I think this might be me done’. I asked what he meant and he said, ‘I think I might just stop here. It’s not going to get any better than this’.
“Obviously this was the last day when you’re in Rome, you’ve just done three weeks, and I don’t think he was expecting to be standing in Rome in the pink jersey, so it was a lot to take in for him.
“He then went to the Tour [de France] and other races but I think it was always in the back of his mind. Obviously I saw him at the December [Visma] camp as well, and he was getting ready for the season and he seemed happy and motivated, but I think that overriding feeling of wanting to stop was a big thing and I have to say chapeau.
“He’s also getting paid a lot of money to race his bike and he’s saying, ‘Actually, no, I’ll pass on that. I want to finish at the highest level.”
Doull, 32, added that the pressure Yates and other riders of his ilk are under makes it entirely understandable that he came to the decision he did. “It’s a lot of sacrifice, a lot of risk, a lot of time away, especially when you’ve been doing it at Simon’s level for so, so long,” Doull continued.
“I work just as hard as the other guys but the level of expectation and demand is a lot less for me, so that’s probably why I would be happy to do this for another four, five years or whenever that time comes for me.
“But for those top guys, the level of commitment, scrutiny, and dedication they’re under is a lot. I just think chapeau for not just taking the cheque and doing nothing and instead finishing when he was ready to finish. I think that’s admirable.”
Matteo Jorgenson rode the Tour de France with Yates last year, a race in which the Briton took a memorable stage victory in the Massif Central. Jorgenson’s side of the story was different to Doull’s in that he had received no indication that the 33-year-old Yates was close to hanging up his racing wheels.
“With my teammates now we talk about it and ask if we were surprised, and if we got any feeling that he was already checked out or anything,” Jorgenson said. “None of us really can [say yes] because he was so professional last year and it was really the full Simon Yates in every race he was at.
“He was very professional last year and was always present in all the races and training camps that I was with him at.
“It’s not like Simon was talking about it last year or that it was something on his mind publicly or with us. Probably it was with his intimate circle and the people he was close with it was something he talked about.”
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Jorgenson shared a story from Visma’s pre-Tour altitude camp in Tignes in the French Alps last June to highlight Yates’s professionalism. “I didn’t win the Giro, I don’t know what that experience is like so I can’t judge him for it. All I saw was that he won the Giro and then a few days later he drove to altitude and joined me and the other guys preparing for the Tour.
“All I thought then was that this guy is extremely, extremely dedicated and he was. It’s an extremely hard thing to do in that he hadn’t had any celebration. People imagine you win a Grand Tour and you go out and celebrate for a while but it’s not really the reality of cycling; there’s always another race.
“I don’t judge people for the decisions they make and I actually come away with it with even more respect for him because I know it’s a decision that wasn’t easy. I am sure he has good reasons. You only know someone’s experience when you’re the one living it so I just applaud that he was willing to take a hard decision and be confident with it.”
Visma team manager Richard Plugge was also similarly shocked by Yates’s decision, and the Dutch boss explained how the two-time Grand Tour winner explained to him that he’d be bowing out.
“He called us over the Christmas period, we had a good talk and it was a clear message,” Plugge said. “If someone calls you and says I want to retire, what are you going to say? Don’t do it? No, it doesn’t work like that.
“He will have thought about it and he did and we also know him as someone who thinks a lot about things and then comes up with a good idea, his own idea, so I knew when he called me he knew he had had enough.
“It’s very sad that he left us, but on the other hand, like Jonas [Vingegaard] said, we have respect for the way he did it. He said I want to quit, I want to retire, I want to leave, and that’s his choice.
“Of course it would have been better if he told us in September but we can’t dwell on that for a very long time. It is what it is and we have to adapt to it.”
