Simon Yates could complete British cycling grand slam

The Guardian: The journey towards British domination of world cycling that began in Barcelona in the summer of 1992, when Chris Boardman claimed an Olympic gold medal, is likely to climax in Madrid on Sunday if Simon Yates completes a British grand slam of European road racing’s grand tours.
Assuming he survives Saturday’s final mountain stage of the 2018 Vuelta a España in Andorra, Yates will become the first of Bury’s chosen two — he races alongside his twin brother Adam — to win one of cycling’s grand tours.
Yates closing on a first grand tour victory — and the fact that he does not ride for Team Sky — is remarkable enough. What is even more astounding is that his success would achieve an unprecedented clean sweep by three different British riders in the 2018 season.
Yates would follow Chris Froome in Italy and Geraint Thomas in France, should he win in Spain. It will also be the fifth consecutive grand tour win by a Briton, a sequence that began over a year ago with Froome’s win in the 2017 Tour de France.
With two stages remaining the usual caveats apply – not to mention the Giro d’Italia, the Grand Tour in May, in which Yates seemed set fair for victory only to “do a Devon Loch”, collapsing on the mountain climbs only 48 hours from victory to finish a mere also-ran in Rome.
The swashbuckling, devil-may-care style that after years of calculated racing by others proved so refreshing, but ultimately so fatiguing, in Italy, has not been evident in Spain.
Instead Yates has bided his time and, like his brother Adam, seems to have conserved his energy as much as possible.
As the Vuelta reaches its climax, the Spanish media is talking of a “four-legged Yates”, with the twins leaning on each other in the final mountain stages to ensure Simon’s final success. “He’s my secret weapon,” the race leader said of his brother this week.
Yates’s success has been almost a decade in the making. As an 18-year-old in 2010, he joined the British Cycling Academy and won a world junior track title. Stage wins in the 2011 and 2013 Tour de l’Avenir, a proving ground for young talent, stole the eye, as did a stage win in the 2013 Tour of Britain.