Analysis: Should Juan Ayuso race the Tour de France as Tadej Pogacar's domestique?

Juan Ayuso is completing a great performance in the Tour de Suisse, managing to win Thursday's very hard queen stage solo and fighting in the overall classification with Remco Evenepoel and company. The question we ask ourselves, opened by About Cycling analyst Christian Josimar, is whether he should join Tadej Pogacar in the next Tour de France.

UAE Team Emirates doesn't seem to support the Slovenian as well as it could in the Grande Boucle. In recent years it prefers to send its stars to different grand tours (João Almeida, for example, is a specialist in the Giro d'Italia) and they paid dearly for that in 2022 against the different strategy of Jumbo-Visma, which destroyed Pogacar with the Roglic-Vingegaard duo.

So, seeing that Tadej will not be in top form for the Tour after the fracture in his wrist that has kept him several weeks in the dry dock and has cut his preparation, Matxín and company could consider taking Juan Ayuso so that, along with Adam Yates, they form a great block to try to fight with a Jonas Vingegaard who, seeing the watts he moved last week in Dauphiné, seems unstoppable;

The long injury of Juan Ayuso.

If Juan Ayuso's season had gone according to plan and he had not taken so long to recover from the physical problems he suffered after the last Vuelta a España, we would not be considering this possibility.

However, Juan has been in the dry dock for several months and, after racing Romandie, in the Tour de Suisse he is showing a very good peak of form that surely could extend to the next Tour de France.

Seeing the good condition also of Adam Yates, who was the best of the 'mortals' in Dauphiné only behind Jonas, UAE could bring a team that would put a lot of fear to Jumbo facing a first week in which the Dane could plan to do much damage from the start in the Pyrenees to a Pogacar that will arrive very short of form.

Complicated

However, it is complicated to think that Matxín and the rest of the UAE Team Emirates directors would suddenly decide to turn around the season of Juan Ayuso and condition him to arrive at 100% to try to win the Vuelta a España between August and September so that he can be Tadej Pogacar's teammate in the Tour de France.

We'll see what happens. In 2022 UAE did not surround well enough a Pogacar who arrived as a clear favorite after winning the last two Tours. In 2023 they have bet on an erratic rider like Adam Yates as main support, will it be enough? Will they dare with Juan Ayuso? We will find out in the next few days...