Team News: Yates in Tour of Croatia

Adam Yates wins Tour of Croatia to add to stage win the day before as Mitchelton-SCOTT celebrate successful week

Team News: Yates in Tour of Croatia

Queen stage winner on the Saturday, Adam Yates successfully retained his lead on the final stage to be crowned the 2019 CRO Race champion in Zagreb today. Yates finished seventh place on the final stage behind winner Alessandro Fedeli (Delko Marseille Provence). Teammate Alex Edmondson sprinted to fifth.

In their first appearance at the race, Mitchelton-SCOTT finished the six-day race with the overall winner, a stage victory and the mountains and sprint jerseys. The Australian outfit never finished lower than fifth on any stage.

Final stage
Eight riders formed the day’s breakaway and rode quickly out to over four minute’s advantage. With 30km to go their advantage was split in half and as they negotiated the finish circuits it continued to deplete, but the final survivor, Fedeli, was able to hold on by a few bike lengths to steal the stage with the charging reduced bunch hot on his heels.

Starting the race with stage ambitions, Mitchelton-SCOTT contested each of the six stages and never finished outside the top five. A victory on the Queen stage by Adam Yates highlighted the week, whilst Edmondson represented the outfit strongly across each of the sprint stages, finishing second, third and three-times fifth. The pair also secured the mountains (Yates) and sprint (Edmondson) jerseys.

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Adam Yates: “Today panned out perfectly, we didn’t want to risk working too much earlier in the day and having nobody in the final circuits just in case it kicked off. From the beginning of the week we set out to win a stage and hopefully the GC would come along with that and that’s pretty much what ended up happening. Alex was up there almost every stage challenging for the win and Brent and Callum really set me up for my win on stage five, so as a team we couldn’t have done much more.”

“We had a real mix of guys here and with some of the dangerous finishing circuit things could have got out of control quickly but we stayed focused and never really ended up on back foot the whole week.”

Photo courtesy of Boris Kačan, KL Photo.

The Stage Win (Saturday)
Adam Yates claimed a solo victory on stage five, the Queen stage of the six-day race. After some strong work on the final climb from his Mitchelton-SCOTT teammates Callum Scotson and Brent Bookwalter, Yates attacked with a little under five kilometres remaining. The victory and bonus seconds give him a 15-second advantage on the general classification with one stage remaining.

With over 3300m of climbing in just 135km of racing, today’s fifth stage was always set for an aggressive showdown between the climbers. An initial move of 11 established, but they were caught with over 50km to go and by then, the race was split across the road. A new group of 12 riders established, with Yates and Bookwalter representing Mitchelton-SCOTT. A lack of commitment saw several groups return to the front of proceedings and despite a number of attacks, it all pointed towards a showdown on the final climb.

The last of the serious moves was a solo effort by Matteo Badilatti (Israel Cycling Academy), but strong work by Scotson and then Bookwalter set up the finale for Yates. As Badilatti was caught, Yates made his move. The attack with 4.7km remaining immediately distanced his rivals and he carried the advantage all the way to the line in Platak.

Adam Yates: “The team was so good today and the whole week. We’ve been fighting for a stage and finally we got it today. This was always the main stage for me, most of the other stages were sprint stages. After the Canadian Classics and before the Italian Classics, this race fit into the calendar perfectly so here we are and here we are with a victory.”