“The teams are abusing these athletes; it’s abuse” – British cycling veteran unsurprised by Simon Yates retirement amid claims of ‘unhealthy’ sport

For many, the sudden retirement of Simon Yates in January felt like a bolt from the blue. For Brian Smith, it did not.

Speaking to road.cc, the former British champion, team manager and long-time television pundit delivered one of the most forceful assessments yet of what modern professional cycling is doing to its riders. And in his view, Yates walking away without warning is not an anomaly. It is a symptom.

“Was Simon Yates retiring a surprise? Probably not,” Smith said. “They go away to these training camps for weeks, Tom Pidcock’s in Chile – there’s nothing there.”

For Smith, the issue is not one rider’s motivation. It is the system around him. “It’s pressure, pressure, pressure the whole time, and some people just say that’s enough. What did Pogacar say at the Tour de France? He’s not doing the Vuelta, and there was talk of one word: burnout. Burnout. They’re racing 80 days a year – in my day we raced 120.”

The retirement of Simon Yates has already prompted wide discussion inside the sport. The defending Giro champion stepped away with immediate effect on 7 January, citing a loss of motivation, then disappeared entirely from public view. Reports emerged that he had blocked cycling accounts on social media. Rumours of burnout spread quickly.

Smith sees a clear pattern. “But there’s no place to hide now. I can totally understand it. The teams are abusing these athletes; it’s abuse. They’re looking at riders as Formula One cars.”

That comparison is deliberate. Riders, in his view, are treated as machines to be optimised, marginal gain after marginal gain, with little regard for what happens when the system finally overloads.

“Any tweaks they can do to help performance, they’ll do it irreverent of whether the car crashes, is it going to save the life of the driver? They’re probably not thinking about that. They’re just thinking about performance and speeds.”

This is where Yates’ story intersects with a broader trend. In recent seasons, several high-profile riders have spoken openly about exhaustion, mental strain and the difficulty of sustaining elite performance inside increasingly data-driven, tightly controlled team environments.

Smith also pointed to the comments of Tadej Pogacar, who publicly ruled out riding the Vuelta last summer amid suggestions of burnout after an intense campaign. That word, once rarely used in cycling circles, is now common in interviews and press conferences.

“The bike riders don’t help themselves either,” Smith added. “I think most bike riders think like, if you do this training, have this diet, and take these supplements or don’t take these supplements, and then you’ll have health problems down the line, they don’t care, especially the youngsters. And they’re relying on their teams to look after them.”

That reliance, Smith argues, is precisely where the danger lies. “And cycling, at the top end of our sport, is not healthy.”

Inside Team Visma | Lease a Bike, Yates’ departure left a visible gap in plans for 2026. It also came amid growing conversation about rider workload, condensed calendars, altitude camps, long stints away from home and the psychological cost of constant performance pressure.

Seen through Smith’s lens, the timing of Yates’ decision becomes less mysterious.

Not a rider losing motivation overnight. Not an isolated case. But an example of what happens when the demands of modern cycling collide with the limits of the individual.

For Smith, the real surprise is not that Yates walked away.

It is that more riders have not done the same.