'Cycling is about more than numbers' – Carlos Verona on supporting Juan Ayuso and shaping a team

Back in 2011, when Carlos Verona was a new professional with Burgos, one of the elder statesmen of the Spanish peloton offered a little unsolicited advice that would inform the rest of his career. Young riders don’t always absorb such lessons on the first go, but it probably helped that Verona was being counselled by a role model.

Pablo Lastras was on a rival team, Movistar, but he made a point of dispensing a little guidance to a youngster who, like him, hailed from the hinterland of Madrid. “Carlos, look, cycling is a very hard sport, so don’t make it harder than it is,” Lastras said. “Just try to do things as simply as you can, try to enjoy things as much as you can, and then you will have a long career.”

Fifteen years on, Verona is recounting the tale to Domestique in a video call from his home in Andorra and at the end of arguably the best season of his career. Balancing the very specific demands of his sport with the everyday realities of life, he explains, has been key to everything. Cycling, to paraphrase Arrigo Sacchi, is the most important of the least important things in his life.

“I try to enjoy all the moments, and also find time to stay with my family, because that’s the biggest thing in my life,” Verona says. “I’m trying to do this and, to be honest, I can say the last two seasons have been the most enjoyable. I think now I have found my way in professional cycling: I know what I can do, and what I cannot do.”

Early in his career, Verona realised that his primary vocation was as a domestique. Some young riders struggle with the transition from a glorious amateur career to life at the coalface of the pro peloton, but Verona understood his place in the firmament once he joined QuickStep in 2013.

“It was a really good team with many riders winning, like Tom Boonen and Mark Cavendish,” he recalls. “I saw I was not a winner because I wasn’t fast, so I saw my limitations quite early, but I also saw my strengths. I found the joy in what I do by working for others. And when you have joy, you enjoy it, and you can push yourself, and you see that you’re appreciated by the team.”

Verona carried that philosophy into subsequent stints at GreenEdge, Movistar and his current team, Lidl-Trek. That was his role at this year’s Giro d’Italia, too, at least for the first two weeks. Verona lined up in support of Giulio Ciccone, and his primary duty was to ride for the Italian in the mountains of the third week, but his Giro turned on a slippery stretch of road outside Nova Gorica. 

When Ciccone crashed out that afternoon, Verona suddenly found himself deployed in an unfamiliar role. He had been one of the few Lidl-Trek riders to avoid falling in Nova Gorica and so he was the obvious choice to infiltrate the break on the following day’s rugged stage to Asiago. Although Verona only had one pro win to his name, he was strangely undaunted by the opportunity that presented itself on the final climb to Dori.

“When you are a gregario, you work for a team, no? And when we lost Ciccone, I knew the work I could do for the team was to try to win a stage, no?” Verona shrugs. “It wasn’t the moment to get emotional; it was the moment to be focused and do everything as well as I could do, so I just thought about my breathing, my power and so on. Only in the last 200m did I think about winning the stage, and then the emotion came.”

It was only the second victory of his career after a stage won on the 2022 Dauphiné in strikingly similar circumstances. As if by kismet, his wife Ester and their children were at the finish line, having arrived in Italy for a rest day visit. In the mixed zone afterwards, Verona highlighted their presence, but he declined to label his long absences from home for his job as a sacrifice. “No, I won’t say that because we’ve found the right balance,” he said.

It was striking that as Verona spoke that afternoon, he was repeatedly interrupted by Lidl-Trek teammates who had clambered their way into the mixed zone to offer their congratulations. In that light, it probably wasn’t surprising that Lidl-Trek offered Verona a new contract at the season’s end, though the length of the deal – three years – to a 33-year-old rider raised eyebrows given modern cycling’s obsession with youth. Verona’s Giro stage win showcased his enduring quality, but his value to the team extends beyond the reading on his powermeter.

“Nowadays everybody can do really good numbers, no? But in the end, I think professional cycling is about much more than numbers,” he says. “We live together for one month, away from our families, so we have to fight together as a team. You need the right people to do that, and I think that’s what they appreciate on this team. They try to have good riders, but also good people who can work together. They look for something more than power numbers.”

Lidl-Trek have also been looking for a reliable Grand Tour leader in recent years, and that long search eventually led to the signing of Juan Ayuso, who joins after a very public and acrimonious divorce from UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Verona, inevitably, will be a key figure in Ayuso’s supporting cast next season. 

“I’m really happy because I think we can give him a good environment, so I hope he can start a new chapter of his career in a different way,” says Verona, who downplays the idea that his arrival will upset the equilibrium of a team that already features Mattias Skjelmose and Ciccone. “I think we have space for all three in the calendar. We were missing one rider, really.”

Although they are both Andorra residents, Verona only truly got to know his new leader when they were both on international duty at the World Championships in Kigali in September. That Rwandan sojourn came just after Ayuso’s tempestuous Vuelta a España, where he won two stages either side of decrying his UAE team as a “dictatorship” after they unexpectedly dropped the news of his departure on the rest day. 

Verona knows a little bit about a fractious departure from a team, given that he left QuickStep for GreenEdge midway through 2016 after Patrick Lefevere threatened to leave him on the sidelines for the rest of the year. In truth, Lefevere’s ire was reserved for Verona’s agent and the two have long since made their peace – “Patrick was one of the first people to write to me after I won on the Giro” – but the experience makes him smile at Ayuso’s public image as something of an enfant terrible.

“I think that sometimes in the media, we don’t see the best version of him, but I think he’s a nice guy,” Verona says, shaking off the idea that Ayuso’s penchant for plain-speaking might pose a problem among the existing roster at Lidl-Trek.

“One of the strengths of this team is that they really let you be yourself,” Verona says. “And besides, all the big champions have strong characters, no? They all have something special about them. Maybe some of them show it more in the media, some others keep it inside, but they all have something special: that’s why they’re winners, and so it’s not a problem for me.”

Verona, for his part, is not averse to a rider showing more than a flicker or two of his character in public. His five-year spell at Movistar, after all, overlapped with the three seasons of the fly-on-the-wall documentary series about the team, ‘The Least Expected Day.’ The show offered a surprisingly unvarnished look at the dynamics inside Movistar, and though the tactical errors and interpersonal tensions depicted were hardly flattering, it all served to humanise the team. 

“Of course, sometimes they focused on certain things to make a story, but I think it was good for the team and also for cycling,” Verona says. “It really showed the human part of a professional cycling team.”

At this year’s Vuelta, Verona’s willingness to speak his own mind led to an online backlash. Israel-Premier Tech’s presence in the Vuelta amid Israel’s invasion of Gaza sparked daily human rights demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Palestine. The protests grew in size and intensity as the horrific death toll in Gaza continued to mount, leading to the shortening of three stages and the outright cancellation of the final leg in Madrid.

After stage 11 into Bilbao had been shortened, Verona was asked for his view by Eurosport. “I’m in favour of trying to keep the sport as neutral as possible,” he said. “Everyone has the right to protest, but it shouldn’t disrupt the work of others.” 

It made Verona a lightning rod for criticism in Spain, with many decrying his words as tone deaf in light of the unspeakable atrocities unfolding in Gaza. “I was just trying to say that I was sad that the sport was being used for political things, and of course there were people who disagreed,” Verona says now, adding that, in the absence of any firm pronouncement from the UCI or the IOC, the riders found themselves as the public faces of a situation that was not of their making.

“Many things were happening around the race that we could not control. I hope that in future this doesn’t happen anymore. I don’t know if it was up to the UCI or the IOC, but I hope the people who have to make these decisions about having a team in the race or not do it on time. 

“I think we were exposed to a risk that wasn’t necessary, because I think probably a lot of people that were racing in the Vuelta would have agreed with the protestors. But I think this probably wasn’t the way or the place to do it.”

Much of the criticism levelled at Verona focused on his residence in Andorra, though he gently pushes back against the idea that he is simply a tax exile and nothing more. He moved to Andorra over a decade ago, partly due to its proximity to his wife’s Catalan family, and he has since laid down roots in the principality.

“It’s not that it’s simply my postal address, but for some people in Spain, you are like an imposter for going away like this,” he says. “When you’re a professional cyclist, you are almost 180 days on the road every year, and you need a place where you can make the most of your career on the financial side and also in terms of your training. I can do altitude 20 minutes from home, the lifestyle suits my family, and I’m living among other sportspeople. For me, Andorra is the perfect mix.”

Verona’s affiliation with Andorra has been underscored by a business venture off the bike. He wasn’t simply a participant in the inaugural Andorra MoraBanc Clàssica last June, he was also a key member of the race organisation, having floated the idea to former Andorran cycling federation Gerard Riart three years ago. Riart, who had experience in organising international ski events in the country, was quickly sold on the idea.

“I saw the number of riders coming to live in Andorra, and I thought it was only a matter of time before we had a professional race here,” Verona says. “And I said, ‘ok, I can wait until somebody does it, or maybe I can try to push a little bit to have it.’”

Meetings with sponsors and local councils take up considerable chunks of his spare time, but Verona, who was also a marketing student in the early years of his career, is simply glad to exercise the head as well as the legs.

“Cycling is a lot of physical effort but not a lot of mental effort,” Verona says. “To find this balance, I wanted to put time into something else, and this ‘something else’ has been this race. It’s been a really nice experience to organise it, to work for it, and then when I saw that it was really happening, it was a very nice reward.”

The reward continued on race day, where Verona helped his Lidl-Trek teammate Skjelmose to victory. “It was one of the highlights of last year,” he smiles, though thoughts are already turning firmly to the new campaign.

Lidl have taken over ownership of his team from Trek, and although the longstanding core of the squad remains unchanged, the German supermarket giant’s increased investment has seen every detail ratchet up another notch for 2026. Verona could sense it in every meeting during the team’s pre-season gathering in Germany last month. 

“What it changes is that we really have everything to be at the best possible level now, all the facilities to work and give our best version,” Verona says, even if his outstanding ambition is the same as it ever was. “The one thing I really have left to do in cycling is to win a Grand Tour with a teammate. I think I’ve done 17 Grand Tours and never done it, so I really hope we can do that in the next three years.”

Spoken like a true gregario.