The Guardian: Under a hot September sky and to the incongruous strains of Bad Moon Rising – not to mention those of the even less podium-friendly Another One Bites the Dust – Simon Yates completed the final few laps of his first Grand Tour victory in Madrid on Sunday night.
At 7.48pm local time, after 23 days, 21 stages and 3,254.7km, the 26-year-old rider from Bury finally crossed the line outside the Cibeles palace.
In winning the Vuelta a España, Yates crowned a stunning year for British cycling that has now yielded an unprecedented British Grand Tour slam in the wake of Chris Froome’s Giro d’Italia win and Geraint Thomas’s Tour de France victory.
Twenty-four hours earlier, Yates had appeared to be struggling to take in what he was on the verge of achieving.“Yes, I’ve made it! It’s still sinking in,” he said after Saturday’s penultimate stage in his adopted home of Andorra. “I’m incredibly proud. I’m also incredibly proud of the team. They’ve carried me for these entire three weeks.”
On the subject of how exactly he had made it, Yates was characteristically succinct. “I just tried to make my own rhythm,” he said. “I gave everything I had and thankfully it was enough.”
It certainly was. Yates and his twin brother and teammate, Adam, have come a very long way since the day their father took them to the Manchester Velodrome to watch Bury Clarion race – and not just in kilometres.
Confirmation of his victory elicited polite, rather than rapturous, applause from the crowds in the centre of Madrid. The race over, many drifted off in search of aperitivos rather than stay for the prize ceremony.