La Vuelta Champion Simon Yates fully focused on next challenge in Innsbruck

Winning La Vuelta at the age of 26 seems to have done little to change Simon Yates.

Two weeks after standing on the top step of the podium in Madrid as Britain's youngest ever Grand Tour winner, Yates will line up alongside his twin brother Adam as part of an eight-strong British team in Sunday's world championship race in Innsbruck.

But as he prepares to tackle a mountainous 258.5km course which seems ideally suited to the explosive, attacking style he and his brother share, there is no sense of any post-Vuelta hangover.

"Yes and no," he told Press Association Sport when asked if he was still on a high. "I'm focused on what we have to do here. It's been almost two weeks since the Vuelta. You had the real high straight after the race.

"But I always had this in the back of my mind before we even started the Vuelta, so it wasn't a super big celebration. I'm not a big party animal anyway so it doesn't matter. I'm quite focused on what we have to do here."

The Vuelta win has marked out Simon as one of the favourites for Sunday's race, but though he is clearly in confident mood, Yates cautioned you can never predict a one-day race based on a rider's form in a Grand Tour.

"I think a lot of people underestimate the difference, not just tactically but physically," he said. "For the past five years I've been working towards Grand Tours and not really the explosive one-day huge efforts.

"If you look at my record in detail, I never win stages until the fifth or sixth day, right back to the juniors and the under-23s, I don't win races until everyone's tired. So though I agree my style is suited towards one-day races, it's a different animal...

"People see guys winning Grand Tours and think, 'Oh, he's going good so he's going to win this one-day race next week' but to me it doesn't work like that.

"There are guys who are better at one-day races than me and that's no secret."

One of those guys might well be Adam, who has the better one-day record of the two twins, boasting three major wins to Simon's one, as well as a number of podium finishes.

Like Simon, Adam has had Sunday's date circled on his calendar since the route was announced.

His build-up to Innsbruck has been very different to the one he envisaged but not in any way he will complain about.

After a disappointing Tour de France, he changed his race programme to help Simon in La Vuelta - a rare sight of the twins racing together - foregoing his plan to ride a number of one-day events to fine-tune his approach.

The outcome made it all worthwhile.

"It was good, wasn't it!" he said of seeing Simon's win first-hand. "We've been trying for a couple of years now. Simon's been close. He was close in the Giro, and it just goes to show when you work hard good things happen.

"My plans changed quite a bit but if the team want me to do a certain race I'm happy to do it, and at the end of the day the outcome was great. I got a Grand Tour under my belt and we finally won one so you can't complain about it.

"It would have been nice to do a couple more one-day races but the endurance and conditioning you get from the Vuelta, it's pretty hard to replicate that in training."

All eyes may be on Simon following the Vuelta, but Adam could be just as good an option on Sunday, particularly if Simon finds he is more fatigued in his legs than he may be in his head.

"If you've gone too deep in the Vuelta you'll pay for it," Adam said. "I didn't go super deep. I feel pretty good. All things look good."