Adam Yates was on the team bus, about to head back to the hotel, when the weirdest thing happened. “You’re going to get the maillot jaune,” Matt White, his team director, told him. Yates had already showered, the bus was leaving and there was a good chance he would never remember the day he rode into Privas, a small town in the Ardèche.
This was about to change.
White told him that Julian Alaphilippe, the leader of the Tour de France, had taken a bidon — a plastic drinks bottle — from a team member inside the final 12.5 miles. The rule exists to reduce the danger that comes at the end of a race and it earned Alaphilippe a 20-second penalty. His lead