Tour de France: Adam Yates devastated by twin's doping ban
By Ian Parker, PA Sport
Last Updated: 01/07/16 1:00pm
Adam Yates has admitted he is "devastated" by his brother's failed doping test but insisted it would have no impact on his Tour de France.
The newly rebranded Orica-BikeExchange team had hoped to have the Bury twins together in their Tour line-up, but Simon Yates is instead serving a four-month ban after a team doctor failed to properly apply for a medical exemption for his asthma treatment.
Speaking at a press conference ahead of Saturday's opening stage, Adam said: "It is what it is. He is an innocent guy and he has had his career ruined by a simple mistake and I'm pretty devastated about that.
"But I have raced without him before, I will go to other races without him, so I have to get on with it and it doesn't take much to do that."
Simon returned an adverse analytical finding for the drug Terbutaline during Paris-Nice in March, and last month he was handed a backdated ban that ruled him out of the Tour. He will return to competition at the Tour of Poland on July 12.
The 23-year-old brothers spent two weeks training together in Spain last month, when it was still hoped they could line up together in France, as they did in the 2015 Tour.
"I have been training with him, but we have been doing that since we were eight years old," Adam said. "He is always been hard-working; it's in his nature.
"When something like that happens, the best thing you can do is to get back on the bike and carry on as before because there's nothing you can do to change it now.
"It was great to ride with him last year and it's a shame he is not here this year, but either way, it's a hard race."
In last year's Tour, Adam finished seventh on stage eight to Mur de Bretagne and seventh on stage 10 to La-Pierre-Saint-Martin in the Pyrenees, and this time he is hunting stage victories.
"As soon as the road goes up, I will have my opportunity and I'll try to take that opportunity," he said. "Last year I had a couple of nice top 10s, so we will try to take that one step higher and take a victory."
While individual stages are the goal for now, Adam is seen as a potential grand tour winner in the future.
"Hopefully in a few years I can get up there in grand tours and on the podiums of grand tours," he said. "That's the aim in the future, but this year we will stick to stages."
Follow stage one of the Tour with our live blog from 11.30am BST on Saturday.
