"Inspiring and quite motivating" - Simon Yates looks to follow on the footsteps of Jonas Vingegaard and his coach

Simon Yates raced with his twin brother Adam for many years at the Jayco team but both have now departed. In 2025, they find themselves in the top rival teams of Team Visma | Lease a Bike and UAE Team Emirates - XRG, both leading their teams at the Giro d'Italia and then supporting their leaders at the Tour de France. Simon talks about why he decided to switch to Visma and how he hopes to evolve from his partnership with Jonas Vingegaard.

"Maybe I'll do worse here, but I got the feeling I had got the best out of what I could do there. I was doing a lot of the training camps by myself, which is not a bad thing, and I enjoyed that freedom. But the sport is at such a high level now there came a point where I needed more input," Yates said in Visma's media day, as reported by Cyclingnews.

I didn't have the knowledge. I didn't know what to do any more. So that was also another reason to make the change, because at one point or another, it's never easy to be suffering on everybody's wheels." After seeing the evolution of Adam in the Grand Tours since joining UAE, it also gave motivation for this move. The Briton is no longer a solo leader, but he will still enjoy a fair share of leadership of his own.

Whilst Olav Kooij and Wout van Aert will chase stage wins, Yates will aim for the pink jersey, one that eluded him in 2018 when he arrived at the final week leading the race, with the likes of Wilco Kelderman and Steven Kruijswijk set to support him in the mountains. Even though it's a B-team, it will count on a ton of experienced and strong riders to back him up. It's a demonstration of power from one of cycling's top teams.

"I think a lot of WorldTour teams are close to each other now, it's just the finer details that separate the top ones from the others. This one [Visma] is very tightly organised, and the people here are very direct: this is how we do things, this is the way it's done," he continues. "It was the opposite at Jayco, where I had a lot of freedom and I enjoyed having that, for certain periods."

"But there came a moment when I was doing my own thing and getting the same results, so I needed a change. And that's where I thought – ok, let's try this. I don't want to finish my career and have any regrets. I wanted to be the best version of myself," he justifies as the main reason for joining the Dutch team. 

Another is the hope of taking another step in his climbing performances, at age 32. For this, he links up with Tim Heemskerk, Jonas Vingegaard's coach. "It's one of the reasons why I am here, because I want to learn from the best. Jonas has shown himself to be one of the best riders in the world and I am also searching for that, I want to see if I can make that jump. So I made the decision to work with his coach."

As is the case with riders joining UAE, Yates has some important differences in his training methods over the past few months. "I will not go into excruciating detail, some things should be kept private, but it's definitely a different approach - everything from the timings of how much things are done to when to do them. That's a big difference, but it's nothing space age."

On Vingegaard himself, whom he'll race with at the Volta a Catalunya, and then again at the Grand Boucle, the Briton got a good first impression. "He's got a real attention to detail, I was not expecting that to be different but to see it in first person, that was inspiring, and quite motivating. Hopefully I'll pick up some things from him."