Sean Yates signs with French squad Nippo Delko One Provence as a coach

Sean Yates has joined French squad Nippo Delko One Provence as a coach.

British great Yates has a formidable reputation as a rider in the 1980s and 1990s but also as a sports director with Team Sky and Tinkoff.

Having left Tinkoff as a DS in 2016, Yates is now returning to the professional ranks as a coach with Nippo Delko One Provence.

The French ProTeam recently appointed a new managing owner, as CEO of headline sponsor Delko Group Philippe Lannes took over the team in April.

Yates said: "It is the first time that I will train professionals from a French team.

“It is a new chapter for me and I am very happy with it. After I got a message from Philippe Lannes, I immediately got into this project. We have a motivated team that works together in the right direction. This allows us to continue to improve and come a long way.”

As a rider Yates was one of the best British pros of his generation, winning a time trial stage of the 1988 Tour de France and a stage of the Vuelta in the same year.

After retiring in 1996 while riding for Lance Armstrong’s Motorola team, Yates moved into team management with the short-lived Linda McCartney Racing Team, also working with Discovery Channel and Astana.

In 2010 he joined Sky as a sports director and in 2012 he steered Sir Bradley Wiggins to victory in Paris-Nice, the Tour de Romandie, the Critérium du Dauphiné, the Tour de France yellow jersey and Olympic gold in London.

He left the team in October that year and later worked with NFTO and Tinkoff-Saxo.

Nippo Delko One Provence has been part of the peloton since 2008 and has received invites to a number of prestigious WorldTour races, including Paris-Roubaix in recent seasons.

Evaldas Šiškevičius, a Lithuanian rider with the squad, was a major talking point after the 2018 edition of the ‘Hell of the North’, when he finished outside the time limit and found the gates of the finishing track were locked.

>>>Tour de France director gives update on safety measures for fans and riders

He returned to the race last year as his perseverance paid off and he finished in the top-10 after 257km of brutal racing.