Adam Yates has proved his quality this season, with classy rides to score top tens in Tirreno, Tour de France stages, second in both the GP Montreal and Tour of Alberta in Canada. But his standout result from 2015 was when he won Clasica San Sebastian, confirming he is not just a talent for the future, but right now. Cycling Weekly spoke to the 23 year old about his big win and his 2015 season.

“I couldn’t hear anything at all on the radio. Maybe about a kilometre to go, I heard something. But I was asking if I was in the lead and the director was like ‘good, good ride’. I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s not what I want to know. I need to know if I’m actually in the lead or not.’ When you get into town, you go under this bridge and then all the crowd are at the side of the road and you can’t hear anything.”

“You’re always better off not celebrating than celebrating for second,” proposes Yates. “You see guys do it all the time — I’ve done it myself in the past when I was an amateur in France. I gave it the full one, like the 10, 15-second salute, and then it turned out I’d come second!”

Yates has steadily been building a strong palmares. His one-day win in San Sebastian built on a smaller one-day win at the GP Industria and Artigianato in 2014, plus the Selcuk stage and the overall at the Tour of Turkey that same year.

“I think in general, as soon as you win a race, you know you can do it again and that confidence goes a long way.”

Yates says that he has been helped into the pro ranks by the fact that the jump from U23 to pro at Orica-GreenEDGE is not as severe as it used to be. He explained that riders who were really strong at U23 level, where he named Julian Alaphilippe as an example, tend to be strong as pros too after a season or so.

“You see young guys coming up now and they’re always doing well,” he says “Like Magnus [Cort-Nielsen] on our team this year. He came straight from under-23s to getting top 10s in WorldTour races. I don’t feel like there’s a massive jump up. But maybe that’s just me.”

Despite his one-day successes, Yates is firmly focused on GCs in stage races, and he says that if he keeps progressing then he doesn’t see why he cant ride GC at the Tour de France soon, having gone well against Froome and Quintana this year.

“Hopefully if I improve and get stronger, I don’t see why we can’t do top 10 in the future,” he says. “It doesn’t take a lot to go after GC, you just have to look after yourself and stay out of trouble.”