At the age of 20, for the first time in his fledgling career as a professional, Juan Ayuso wore the yellow jersey of the leader of a race. He had earned it with all of the law in the time trial. He couldn't keep it on the mountain, his land. He choked on the queen stage of the Tour de Romandie, where the very young cyclist from the UAE received a reality check. With 8 km to go, the pace of the group of favorites was too much for him. He got off the hook and said goodbye to the lead.
Goodbye to what would have been his first great success in a general classification of the World Tour. Ayuso aspired to win in his first race of the season, as Evenepoel, Pogacar, Vingegaard and Roglic had done in this 2023. The comparison was for the chosen ones.
But the inactivity weighed on the Spanish. Romandy is the first test of him in more than seven months. He had not worn a number since he finished third, getting on the podium in Madrid, in the 2022 Vuelta. It was said that it was a strange tendinitis in the Achilles tendon of his right leg. Yes but no. He himself revealed in Marca that it was something else. "I have affected a sural nerve in my leg," he explained. Although it wasn't even clear to me.
But second place in Thursday's sprint and victory in Friday's 18km time trial seemed to put an end to all doubt. He was the leader of Romandía, a race that neither Indurain nor Contador could win. The test of cotton was missing: the high mountain. And he couldn't get over it.
Perhaps it was the rain and the cold, it could be the altitude (going from 800 meters to more than 2,000) or the hardness and length (almost 21 km) of the last ascent, to Thyon 2000. But Ayuso could not follow the best . “The port was hard. He had no legs. I have exploded. I gave it my all but when I saw that I couldn't follow them, I picked up my pace”, he recounted, after losing almost three and a half minutes.
"Today is normal," he reflected. She stayed before Egan Bernal or Mäder, for example. "I'm not full. Nobody believed me. The time trial was a surprise for me. I had been thinking of helping the team ”, she opened up about her feelings. Ayuso explained that he will now rest until the Tour of Switzerland, which starts on June 11, since he has neither the Giro nor the Tour on his calendar.
The best news for the UAE is that his teammate Adam Yates was the one who won the stage and inherited the yellow jersey. The British, winner of the 2021 Volta, who has a 19-second advantage over Matteo Jorgenson (Movistar), hopes to certify the final victory today.
