'Deary me!' - Shock as key Ineos Grenadiers man Adam Yates suffers 'complete capitulation' at Tour de France

There was a stunned reaction from Eurosport's commentators as key Ineos Grenadiers rider Adam Yates got dropped in a dramatic moment on Stage 17 at the Tour de France. All the pre-stage hype involved experts imploring Ineos to «have no regrets» and making it abundantly clear that «they have to go for it» to take the race to UAE Team Emirates and Jumbo-Visma. Ad/> Ineos already boasted a clear numerical advantage over their general classification rivals — UAE Team Emirates and Jumbo-Visma — as the race reaches its business end in the Pyrenees.

The team then received a further boost as Rafal Majka suffered a muscle tear and could not start Stage 17 for UAE Team Emirates. Tour de FranceFerocious Pogacar wins Stage 17 as Vingegaard holds on, Thomas dropped21 MINUTES AGO It represented another blow to Tadej Pogacar's hopes of snatching back the yellow jersey from Jonas Vingegaard and a fillip for Geraint Thomas and Ineos as he remained in contention. But to everyone's surprise, Ineos stuttered badly with 53km remaining on a climb on Wednesday and Yates «capitulated» when he had been expected to be helping to haul Thomas up into an attack.

«Oh, that's Yates!» exclaimed Dan Lloyd, on commentary for Eurosport at the time. «If you had told me that Yates would be dropped in the high mountains, I would not have believed you. I think we have to remember that he got Covid at the Tour de Suisse leading into this, so he had very few race days and had to take time off the bike to recover from that.