You haven't watched the race then. The commentators on the first climb repeatedly talked about Formolo being Cannondale team leader, whilst they struggled to not call Yates Simon if they mentioned him at all before he attacked.
Would love to see this Adam Yates hype. In this very thread people were speculatively picking Simon Yates to win when he clearly is not suited at all, because they did not know about Adam and his abilities.
Your interpretation of the initial comment would be valid if there was an extra comma before the middle clause, but there wasn't, so it clearly reads as a slight on Yates. Clearly given the skandi intepretation, it may be that the OP isn't native and didn't mean that, but the words are the words.