"He can win the World Championships" - Bruyneel and Martin still believe Juan Ayuso can achieve a lot in 2025

Juan Ayuso abandoned yesterday the Giro d'Italia after a series of misfortunes that have made it impossible for him to reach Rome. The UAE Team Emirates - XRG rider has not had a good time since he crashed on stage 9 and later on a bee sting in the face forced him to leave the race prematurely.

On The Move podcast, Johan Bruyneel argued that bad luck was the determining factor in the Spaniard's withdrawal: "Ayuso had a harder crash than we initially thought on the gravel stage, he had knee problems and then the wasp thing, there's not much more you can do, he would have preferred to finish the race".

"Nobody who starts a three-week race with big ambitions, even if they don't achieve them, you want to finish the three weeks if you're already in the 18th". Ayuso wanted to have finished the race and helped his team according to his own words, but struggled in the early kilometers of stage 18 and abandoned shortly after getting dropped.

"He's not going to ride another grand tour this year, he's not going to ride the Tour or the Vuelta. He will focus on one-week races and the World Championships," the Belgian pundit argues - the Tour de France is not an option, and the Vuelta a España is quite unlikely with both Tadej Pogacar and João Almeida set to start.

"We shouldn't be hard on him. He's been criticized a lot about being too individual, but at the end of the day he's a great talent who's only 22 years old, there's no need to be in a hurry. He's won a lot of races this year and things don't always go his way".

In this regard, Spencer Martin said that he imagines the Valencian wearing the rainbow jersey next year because the Rwandan Worlds course fits his attributes: "He can win the World Championships, it is a race that suits him very well".