"I’ve been trying to win this race for years" - Adam Yates finally succeeds in winning GP de Montréal

Adam Yates continues a tremendous season. After finishing on the podium of the Tour de France, the Briton has battled Primoz Roglic at the Vuelta a Burgos and now keeps his run of form in the Canadian classics, taking a strong win at the GP de Montréal.

“It was a really long day and the race was super hard. The guys did a perfect job for me, setting a high pace: I am not super explosive, so we knew that if we set a hard pace, we had chance to obtain a top result," Yates said in a post-race interview. Indeed UAE Team Emirates had the numbers and didn't use them to try and attack the race from early on, but instead to set a high pace on multiple laps at Mont Royal, shedding down the group to only a few dozen riders and creating enough fatigue so that they'd lack the explosiveness on the final lap.

It looked like a clear strategy to set up Yates, with Rafal Majka and Brandon McNulty putting in big digs before the 31-year old launched his move in the final lap. "On the last lap we went full gas, that was perfect, I went super fast in the climb and [Pavel] Sivakov was still there, so he obviously had good legs and good condition." Whilst the Frenchman threatened Yates' win, his collaboration was exactly what Yates needed as the chasing group continued a strong chase.

The duo worked together and entered the finishing straight isolated, and there Yates had a strong sprint that could not be matched by the INEOS Grenadiers rider, riding into his first win in the hilly classic. "I thought maybe I could be a little bit quicker in the sprint and that’s how it went," he concludes. "I’ve been trying to win this race for years, I was second in 2015, a long time ago, good memories, but today I succeeded to win”.