Tadej Pogacar on Juan Ayuso: "If I am s**t at the Tour, then he can go"

Tadej Pogacar is going for the Tour de France title for a fourth time this season, but he has recently expressed his desire to race the Giro d'Italia. There appears to be a team dynamic in which Pogacar is pushed into the Tour, however he is ready for Juan Ayuso to take up the leading role at the Grand Boucle.

“If I am shit at the Tour, then he can go. For me, it’s no problem. We understand each other and you can only be good for so many years, you cannot be at the top all of the time," Pogacar said about his teammate Juan Ayuso in an interview with CyclingWeekly. “For sure, if he gets better we will exchange some races and some roles, but we are all here in the UAE team to take the team as a group together to a higher level, so we try to win as much as possible and it doesn’t matter who.”

As UAE grow in size, Ayuso won't be the only strong climber to be within a shot of leading the team in the mountains. João Almeida, Adam Yates, Brandon McNulty and Jay Vine are all top tier climbers and the team has stacked itself with some of the very best. Ayuso has just completed his debut Grand Tour - the Vuelta a Espana - in third position at the age of 19, and there is little doubt in Pogacar's mind that soon the Spaniard will be contesting the same spots as he is.

"One of the biggest machines you will see in cycling. He is super strong, super talented, and we saw in the Vuelta he finished third and he will do great things in cycling," he said of Ayuso. The Spanish climber will focus on the Vuelta a Espana this year with the two being unlikely to clash. However, come 2024 things are likely to change in UAE, and with so many top climbers fighting for the leadership in the best races, there are already talks of that time.