OPINION | Juan Ayuso must leave UAE if he wants to make the most of his career potential

We don't know what is really going on inside UAE Team Emirates with Juan Ayuso, but from the outside it seems clear: Juan Ayuso must leave the UAE team if he wants to fight for a Grand Tour win in the short term.

We analyze this together with CiclismoAlDia. Tadej Pogacar's team will have the Slovenian leading one or two Grand Tours every year and in the leadership scale right now Joao Almeida and Adam Yates are above the Valencian. As if that wasn't enough, behind him Isaac del Toro is pushing hard and we'll see what he can do in the next Vuelta a España.

Until this year everything was going perfectly for Juan in Matxín's team: 2 seasons as a professional and twice unchallenged leader of the Emirati squad in the Vuelta a España. He has responded to perfection: third in his first participation in 2022 and fourth in 2023 after the three Jumbo-Visma in a very complicated year in which he was stopped for a long time due to physical problems.

Thus, with Pogacar as the only leader in the Giro, the team decided to go all out in the Tour to try to dethrone Vingegaard and joined Ayuso, Yates and Almeida as the Slovenian's 3 deputy leaders, with the first 2 being key in Pogi's victory and with Ayuso distant from the collective plan. Mauro Gianetti, team DS, said there would be no change of plans with respect to participating in the Vuelta a España despite his health problems that took him out of the Tour.

The team's position is understandable: they've promised Yates and Almeida to be the ringleaders in the Vuelta and they're not going to put Ayuso in. That would have made them quite angry.

So, we have Juan with a strange season to date in which he racked up wins and podiums in the classics early on, was second to Vingegaard in Tirreno-Adriaticoand won Itzulia Basque Country. He was way up in the Tour when he abandoned on stage 13. 

The argument for why he should leave the team is the following:

Yes, he's tired after the Tour. Yes, he won't be at 100% for the Vuelta. Yes, there are theoretically better riders in his team to take on the Vuelta. However, we believe UAE is the only WorldTour team that would have made this decision. We believe that anyone else, including a Visma team that will go with Sepp Kuss as leader, would have taken a leader of Juan Ayuso's quality to the Vuelta even if he wasn't 100%.

So, what can Juan expect next year: co-leadership in the Giro, another Grand Tour as Pogi's domestique at the Tour? Supposedly, the Slovenian could ride the Vuelta next year to complete his triplet?

What happens if Almeida or Yates wins the Spanish race? Simple, less priority for the Valencian. He should force his way out. In any other team he would be one hundred percent sure to lead alone (at least) one grand tour a year.

Matxín today made it very clear in AS that they are counting on him. He (also in AS) wanted to make it clear that he is in a good mood with the team and that he was not in optimal physical condition to face the Vuelta. Everything indicates that he will continue...