An Ayuso-Almeida soap opera can still bring success for UAE at Vuelta - Analysis

Just a few weeks ago, Juan Ayuso was pencilled in for what looked like a punishment schedule to end his season. After abandoning the Giro d’Italia, the Spaniard had hoped to redeem himself at the Vuelta a España, but UAE Team Emirates-XRG management had seen it differently.

As a general rule, UAE prefer not to send young riders to two Grand Tours in one year, and the persistent murmurs that Ayuso was looking to extricate himself from his contract hardly helped his cause either.

When it emerged last month that Ayuso had engaged Giovanni Lombardi as his agent, it felt as though battle lines had been drawn. Movistar were reportedly waiting in the wings to prise him away. Ayuso, meanwhile, was being consigned to events like the Tour de Pologne and, one assumed, being escorted towards the exit.

At that point, UAE Team Emirates-XRG still hoped Tadej Pogačar could be persuaded to ride the Vuelta. During the final week of his procession at the Tour de France, however, the world champion made it perfectly clear that going to the well for another three-week race in a month’s time was not feasible.

Meanwhile, João Almeida had crashed out of the Tour and though the Portuguese rider’s injuries won’t prevent him from lining up at the Vuelta, UAE figured he could do with some reliable back-up.

Isaac del Toro almost won the Giro and he cannibalised the Vuelta a Burgos earlier this month. The Mexican was an obvious candidate in many ways, but Mauro Gianetti and Matxin Joxean Fernandez understandably figured that another Grand Tour would be too much to ask of a 21-year-old at this point in his development. Suddenly, Ayuso was back in the picture. It’s a funny old game, cycling.

Gianetti, a wily diplomat, has played a straight bat when asked about Ayuso’s presence in the Vuelta line-up. “He’s doing the Vuelta, he’s motivated, and he wants to ride,” Gianetti told Domestique on the Tour de Pologne last week. “At the Giro, unfortunately he had the problems that he had, and he wasn’t able to do the things he had in mind. 

“But the Vuelta is a great opportunity for him. He’s been on the podium in the past, and he’s sharing the leadership there with João Almeida, who is also coming back after the crash that cost him a good Tour. Our rivals are strong, but we’re going in with a strong team, a top-level team.”

And that, in essence, is the crux of the matter. There are lingering questions about Ayuso’s willingness to conform to life at a team that orbits around Pogačar – witness the furore over his apparent reticence to work on the Galibier on last year’s Tour, for instance. But in the here and now, Ayuso buttresses UAE’s Vuelta squad considerably in the absence of Pogačar. With Jay Vine and Marc Soler also featuring, they have a squad to go toe-to-toe with Jonas Vingegaard’s all-star support at Visma | Lease a Bike. 

Ayuso has won Tirreno-Adriatico this year and placed second at the Volta a Catalunya, after all, and his Giro began promisingly before a crash and Del Toro’s emergence compromised it.

In the best-case scenario, Ayuso wins the race or helps Almeida to do so. In the worst-case scenario, he performs well enough to persuade a suitor like Movistar to pay a hefty sum to extricate him from his contract. In that light, it was a no-brainer for Gianetti and Matxin to dispatch the 22-year-old to the Vuelta. 

Quite what Almeida makes of it is another matter, of course. Opportunities to lead UAE in Grand Tours are at a premium on Pogačar’s watch, and the thought of Ayuso sharing the mantle is hardly a comforting one. Almeida has had a few bites of the cherry already, with mixed results. After COVID-19 cost him a likely Giro podium in 2022, he returned to take third a year later. Following his fourth-place finish at last year’s Tour, he lined out at the Vuelta with clear ambition only for another bout of COVID-19 to force him out of the race.

This time out, Almeida arrives at the Vuelta after the finest season of his career, garlanded by wins at Itzulia Basque Country, the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse. He started the Tour with a huge cameo in support of Pogačar in Rouen, but his very real hopes of a podium finish in Paris were thwarted by a crash on stage 7 and he abandoned two days later.

Almeida hasn’t raced since, but he was confirmed in UAE’s Vuelta line-up immediately after the Tour. Crashing and abandoning the Tour is never ideal, of course, but sparing himself the full three-week slog might have a residual benefit at the Vuelta. That freshness might – might – help him against the favourite Vingegaard, who placed second to Pogačar in July.

But to entertain any thoughts of winning the Vuelta, Almeida will first have to win the internal contest at UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who have made clear that they are setting out from Turin with two viable leaders.

Almeida’s gesticulations of annoyance at Ayuso’s performance on the Galibier in the first week of last year’s Tour suggested that the Iberians don’t enjoy the smoothest of relationships, though in truth, it’s all guesswork for those of us outside the UAE camp.

“Sometimes these gestures are unnecessary and yesterday they were unnecessary, but well, it is what it is,” Ayuso told AS at the time, before abandoning the Tour with COVID-19 a few days later.

Ayuso hasn’t raced with Almeida – nor, indeed with Pogačar – throughout this season, which might be telling. It will certainly raise further questions about their ability to dovetail their efforts. Expect an uncomfortable pre-race press conference in Turin – though one imagines UAE will spare us the forced bonhomie of Movistar’s ill-starred ‘trident’ photo op on the 2019 Tour.

On the other hand, the route of this Vuelta should allow the road to provide an early verdict on their credentials, with summit finishes at Limone Piemonte on stage 2, Pal on stage 6 and Cerler on stage 7. And in between, Almeida and Ayuso will have no choice but to row in together in the Figueres team time trial on stage 5. 

In any case, internal leadership battles are very often overhyped in this business. And almost inevitably, the historic examples most often cited are usually the wrong ones. The Hinault-LeMond, Roche-Visentini, Simoni-Cunego, Contador-Armstrong and Wiggins-Froome internecine struggles all provided drama and generated column inches – but the teams in question also carried off overall victory in each instance. 

And leadership questions certainly didn't bother Visma on the Vuelta two years ago when they swept the podium with Sepp Kuss claiming overall victory. UAE would gladly put up with a soap opera like that on this Vuelta so long as it leads to success in Madrid.