Juan Ayuso, 21, is going to compete in his first Tour de France this summer. The ambitious man from Alicante wants to try himself in the best race in the world. It is his third season in the UAE and the team has accepted that he rides alongside Tadej Pogacar. Ayuso began to get an idea of the rival that awaits him in the fifth stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico. Jonas Vingegaard dropped off with 29 km to go on the San Giacomo climb and the Spaniard could not follow him.
The Dane from Visma does not disappoint. When he puts his team to work it is for a reason, because he is going to prove himself. And proving oneself, in his language, is synonymous with showing off, even if the terrain is not the hardest. Vingegaard already wears the blue jersey and only has one rival less than a minute away: Ayuso.
The champion of the last two yellow jerseys crowned the pass with 55 seconds ahead of a group of six pursuers. In the descent and in the final part, they could not take anything away from him. And Ayuso had the help of his partner Del Toro, even younger than him (20). What's more, despite being one against five (Uijtdebroeks, a Visma cyclist, never took over), Vingegaard extended his advantage.
At the finish line, Ayuso sprinted ahead of Hindley (Bora) and O'Connor (Ag2r) to be second but the difference was 1m12s with the winner of the stage. The leader of Visma is showing that, like Pogacar, he also knows how to run against everyone and win alone. This is what he did in the three straight stages of O Gran Camiño, with three rides, and he repeated it in the first mid-mountain stage of the race of the two seas, where Valter and Tulett prepared their boss's attack in San Giacomo.
The Spaniard, who gained 22 seconds in the initial time trial (three of his six victories as a professional have been in that specialty, and who was the leader the first three days), could not be close to the great favorite for the Tour. Although there are more than three months, it is a coup of authority from Vingegaard on the way to the Tour.
Last year, in the Vuelta a España, Ayuso was already the first of the non-Jumbo, more than two minutes from the podium. In clear inferiority, in experience, in tactics and also numerically, he could barely compete with Vingegaard. This Saturday at Monte Petrano, the toughest final, 10 km at 7.9%, they will face each other again and the guy from the UAE will try to put up a bigger fight.
