Juan Ayuso's days at UAE were always numbered - Analysis

Whatever the merits of his opinion, Juan Ayuso did something refreshing at the Vuelta a España on Tuesday: he said exactly what he was thinking

In an era when teams increasingly seek to control the messaging of their riders, lest a stray word damage their corporate image, there was a throwback feel to Ayuso casually lambasting his management as a “dictatorship” while standing outside the UAE Team Emirates-XRG team bus before stage 10. Better yet, there was no attempt from his press officer to shut it down.

It was arguably the most dramatic pre-stage media appearance on a Grand Tour since Gilberto Simoni accused Ivan Basso of trying to sell him a win on the 2006 Giro d’Italia. It certainly put one in mind of the rough and rowdy media ways of outsized characters like Manolo Saiz and Aitor Gonzalez on the Vueltas of the 1990s and 2000s.

It was striking, too, that while Ayuso’s comments were bracing, his tone was measured. The 22-year-old is one of the peloton’s more articulate voices, and he outlined his dismay at his treatment by UAE in the most coherent of terms. He knew his time at the team was already up, but it was his understanding that his departure would only be communicated at the end of the Vuelta.

UAE’s decision to announce his departure on Monday’s rest day, Ayuso said, was taken unilaterally, and, by his telling, it was sprung on him at the last minute. He also took issue with the wording of their statement, which prompted him to go on the offensive when a forest of microphones sprouted up outside the team bus on Tuesday morning.

It’s rare indeed for a top-level rider to reveal how the sausage is made, but in the end, UAE and Ayuso may well have done each other a favour. 

Given the persistent noise linking Ayuso with a move to Lidl-Trek at the end of the season, and given the Spaniard’s patchy displays on this Vuelta, the situation was becoming untenable. It was becoming increasingly preposterous for both parties to pretend as though there was even the slightest chance Ayuso would see out his contract, which was due to expire in three years’ time.

The tensions had been too evident throughout this Vuelta. When Ayuso dropped out of podium contention at Pal on stage 6, he insisted that his GC aspirations had been a fiction invented by UAE and the Spanish media. When he won in Cerler a day later, Ayuso pointed at his ears in celebration, and it was hard not to feel as though the gesture was aimed at his own team as much as at the media.

When Ayuso went AWOL at Valdezcaray on Sunday, losing 22 minutes, João Almeida pointedly noted that he had been left isolated by his team on the final climb. It didn’t require a Kremlinologist to figure out that he was talking primarily about Ayuso.

Ironically, after UAE’s surprise announcement on Monday and Ayuso’s carefully constructed outburst on Tuesday morning, the team at last looked vaguely like an almost cohesive unit on the final climb to Larra Belagua on stage 10. 

Out in front, Jay Vine won the stage from the break. And back in the red jersey group, Ayuso himself put in a short but supersonic turn on behalf of Almeida, setting up the Portuguese rider’s spirited but fruitless volley of attacks on Jonas Vingegaard.

Ayuso doubtless had to endure an excruciatingly awkward dinner table at the UAE hotel on Tuesday evening, and he can expect some frosty breakfasts between now and Madrid. Still, teammate Mikkel Bjerg put the polemics in perspective at the finish of stage 10.

“We’ve won four stages now,” he said. “I think that shows that somehow it’s working.”

Ayuso never fully subscribed to a Tadej Pogacar-centric view of the world and that meant that his days at UAE Team Emirates-XRG were perhaps always numbered, even though he was signed to a contract until the end of 2028.

The Spaniard was still a junior when he signed a contract with UAE in the middle of the COVID-19 lockdown in Europe in April 2020. Pogacar had yet to win the Tour, and Ayuso – the most heavily courted junior in the world at that time – would have signed on the dotted line in the belief that he would soon get his chance to shine.

After a few months at Colpack in 2021 to get up to speed at elite level, Ayuso formally joined UAE in June of that year. By 2022, and still only 19 years old, he was already a podium finisher at the Vuelta a España, but Pogacar’s presence put a natural cap on his status within the team.

In 2024, Ayuso made his Tour debut in the service of Pogacar, but he drew notice only for his reluctance to put his shoulder to the wheel on the Slovenian’s behalf. On the Col du Galibier on stage 4 of that race, Almeida visibly – and perhaps a little performatively – chastised his teammate for failing to come to the front and set the tempo.

Ayuso abandoned due to COVID-19 shortly afterwards, and it would be the last time he would race in the same team as Pogacar. In 2025, Ayuso was diverted towards the Giro d’Italia, and he lined up among the favourites after winning Tirreno-Adriatico.

He looked a possible winner after claiming stage victory at Tagliacozzo in the opening week, but he soon fell behind his younger teammate Isaac del Toro, while his own performances were hampered by a crash.

By the time Ayuso abandoned with an allergic reaction to a bee sting in the final week, he had fallen out of the race for pink and he had also fallen behind Del Toro in the internal hierarchy at UAE. Meanwhile, Almeida had been burnishing his own credentials by hoovering up stage race wins across the campaign.

Ayuso wanted out, and he hired Giovanni Lombardi as his agent to explore his options, with Movistar emerging as an initial suitor. UAE’s management team of Mauro Gianetti and Matxin Joxean Fernandez played down the prospect of his departure, and there was talk of a prohibitive buy-out clause of €100 million, but the wheels continued to turn all summer.

Indeed, Ayuso was initially excluded from UAE’s Vuelta plans, which seemed to more or less confirm his imminent departure, but there was a hasty rethink when Pogacar decided against riding a second Grand Tour this summer.

Ayuso was added to the Vuelta roster alongside Almeida, but it was already clear that the centre couldn’t hold. On the eve of the race, Ciro Scognamiglio of La Gazzetta dello Sport reported that Ayuso was being courted by Lidl-Trek, and that rumour gained even more traction during the opening week of the Vuelta.

By the time UAE’s press release landed on Monday evening, it felt like something of an open secret. On Tuesday, Movistar manager Eusebio Unzué seemed to acknowledge as much, expressing his interest in signing Ayuso while conceding a deal had likely already been agreed elsewhere.

Ayuso still has everything to prove as a Grand Tour rider, but at Lidl-Trek, he will certainly have the leadership role he so desires. No matter how it plays out, it won’t be dull, on the bike or off it.