Adam Yates 'devastated' by brother Simon's ban
Adam Yates admitted he is "devastated" by the circumstances of 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 is instead serving a four-month ban after the team doctor failed to properly apply for a medical exemption for his asthma treatment.
"It is what it is," Adam Yates said when asked what impact the situation had on him. "He's an innocent guy and he's had his career ruined by a simple mistake and I'm pretty devastated about that.
"But I've raced without him before, I'll 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 which 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 Sierra Nevada, Spain, last month when it was still hoped they could line up together in France - as they did in the 2015 Tour.
"I've been training with him but we've been doing that since we were eight years old," Adam Yates said. "He's 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's not here this year, but either way it's a hard race."
In last year's Tour, Adam Yates 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'll 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'll try to take that one step higher and take a victory."
While individual stages are the goal for now, Adam Yates 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'll stick to stages.
"I'm not going to be losing time on purpose but it's the way race goes, I'll probably lose time naturally in splits where I can save a bit of energy so we'll just see what happens.
"The Tour is a different kind of race than any other race, you never know. If I can get in a break in the last week and get time back I could be up there but we'll see."