Simon Yates is laughing. Actually giggling. The whole thing was absurd then, and six months on it’s still utterly barmy. “I met the Pope!” he chuckles. “I’ve shook the Pope’s hand. Can you believe that?” I laugh along with him. “Surreal.” He’s not stopped being bewildered. “I still think it’s unbelievable,” he adds, really elongating and stretching the beginning of that adjective’s prefix.

It was June 1 when Yates exchanged a few words with the recently-ordained Pope Leo XIV, the day after His Redemption and the Miracle of Finestre. The day he won the Giro d’Italia in the most outrageous manner. It was a where-were-you kinda day, a moment in time that no-one watching will ever forget, let alone the protagonists. Seven years on from blowing up on the Finestre while in the lead of the Giro d’Italia on stage 19, Yates came back to the very same mountain and not just took the maglia rosa off Isaac Del Toro with a day to go, but tore and yanked it from his shoulders with bravery, aggression and career-defining panache. The Mexican acted like a nonplussed victim, forgetting that his pockets had been ransacked and instead engaging in a suicidal tussle with Richard Carapaz. For all of Del Toro’s many errors, it was Yates who the moment – and history – belonged to.

In one hour of epic riding, this “cold bloke” – his words, not ours – endeared himself to just about every watching spectator, and everyone in the peloton. We won’t see him in the peloton again though: in January Yates announced a shock decision to retire from the sport immediately. It ensured that he bowed out from the sport as the reigning Giro d’Italia champion. “I feel like it really touched a lot of people,” the 33-year-old tells me backstage at Rouleur Live. “Lessons about sacrifice, hard work. Many years ago I came back to the Giro to try again, and I got nowhere close [to winning]. Always something went wrong. I think a lot of people resonated with that – that mentality of keep on trying.”

This article was published in Rouleur magazine in February 2026. You can read the full article here.