Jeremy Yates finally dethroned in Tour of Southland
The Tour of Southland began on November 1 with a team time-trial in the morning, followed by a short road stage in the afternoon. The top five across the line in stage two became the top five in the general
classification in the same order and remained stagnant until Friday’s stage seven, when the bad luck of former-leader Jeremy Yates finally caught up with him. Former runner-up Jack Bauer took his yellow jersey three seconds ahead of new runner-up Hayden Roulston,
who won the stage.
“If you were a betting man, I wouldn’t bet against me tomorrow – I’ve won the race twice on this stage so we’ll just wait and see,” said Roulston to the press after the stage. “I might have to turn myself
into a sprinter overnight. It’s going to come down to the wire … it’s never over until that last millimetre. I’m going to fight to win this race, I believe I’m good enough to win it and I’ve got a strong enough team to win it. We’re all in very high spirits
now.”
Yates would have lost the race lead in Thursday’s stage six if it weren’t for Roulston’s honourable actions. Roulston waited for Yates when an official motorbike collided with him in the final kilometres
of the stage. Yates has praised Roulston’s gentleman’s move, a respectful tactic that Alberto Contador refused to honour in this year’s Tour de France when he attacked then-race-leader Andy Schleck after the eventual runner-up’s bike chain was dropped.
“I was midway through the attack, I moved out to the right-hand side and the commissaries motorbike came past and tipped me off,” said Yates. “Fortunately Hayden Roulston, who was on the front at the time,
waited for me which was one of the unwritten rules of bike racing – it was a classy decision by him.”
The former race leader had more bad luck in stage seven when he was thrown to the road after he removed his rain jacket and it became tangled in his front wheel. Yates now stands in third overall, 1:24
behind the race leader with only two stages to go.
“In my mind the GC had already kind of slipped away,” said Yates. “Roulston put in a huge dig and I wasn’t able to follow. I had pretty much no sleep last night and was struggling on the bike today with
all the bumps and scraps. I was pretty stiff and then had a wee wardrobe malfunction.”
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