Tadej Pogacar unsure how UAE Team Emirates and Juan Ayuso's plans fit with his: "Everybody has wishes but they don’t come true so easily"

Tadej Pogacar is likely to race the 2024 Tour de France in search of a third win. UAE Team Emirates and the sponsors are very keen on that plan, at least. However he will likely team up with both João Almeida but mainly Juan Ayuso who also has his own ambitions. There are questions on how they can all work together.

“I think he is growing up as a rider, as a person also. He has a super level, but the management need to decide for him what he is going to do, because everybody has wishes but they don’t come true so easily," Pogacar said of his teammate in an interview with GCN. Notably, it has been possible to see that since his first full pro season in 2022, Ayuso and Almeida have often raced with each other but not sacrificed each others' results for the other.

The team seeks UCI points as they focus a lot on getting the first place in the UCI rankings and it is also very likely that it guides the riders into racing individually. This was very clear during the 2022 Volta a Catalunya and this year's Vuelta a Espana as examples. Besides this search for points, Ayuso - a tremendously talented climber and stage-racer - is on his path and hunting his own results. The team will have to somehow make all the pieces of the puzzle fit together if they want to match Jumbo-Visma next summer.

However Pogacar doesn't seem too worried with that situation. He believes that having Ayuso race alongside him could be a benefit to the team, not the other way around. “Jumbo had three leaders in the Vuelta and they did pretty well," he argues. "Nowadays it is pretty good to have two leaders and a lot of teams go with that strategy, but it is always easier to have one rider to be in the front.”