"The first hour he just did everything by himself" - Johan Bruyneel positively surprised by Juan Ayu-show at La Vuelta

The seventh stage of the Vuelta a Espana delivered a lot of action and most of it was centered around UAE Team Emirates - XRG. Whilst Juan Ayuso stormed to an impressive stage win and made the best possible comeback, in the peloton João Almeida attacked Jonas Vingegaard - both on the bike and with his words after the stage.

So he thought I will be the break. You can't miss the move, if you are the move, he just, it was an unbelievable effort," Spencer Martin praised in 'The Move' podcast. "He just is on the gas the entire time of this. It's like a four and a half, 5% climb. The group kind of Jay Vine is in there as well. He's sprinting for KOM points, he's riding the pace a bit and they get to the base of the final climb... Ayuso says, see you later, attacks, drops, everybody wins the stage".

UAE conquered it's third stage in a row, second via a breakaway as Jay Vine went on to assist the Spaniard to his first Vuelta win. Ayuso dropped out of GC contention, but showed in the climb to Cerler just how strong he is on a good day in the mountains. With a third of the Vuelta down, he has already won the stage, and put on a display that he looked to silence critics with.

"Well, first of all, Ayuso did a great stage. We still don't know what happened yesterday, but this guy was obviously on good form today," Bruyneel argued. "It's true that it's different winning a stage from a breakaway. But if you look at his performance today, man, the first hour he just did everything by himself. He was, I mean, I said yesterday on the podcast, I said Port del Cantó is a very annoying climb... Whole climb by himself and the effort he put in and then still have enough left in the final to go away from the breakaway. That's impressive".

But the Belgian pundit believes that Ayuso would also have had a say if he was battling with the GC contenders. "And also, if you look at his performance on the last climb, he didn't lose that much time on the group of favourites. It's true that the group of favourites, there was no continuous pace. It was attacking, slowing down again. But I mean, I listened to his interview afterwards [...] He said he attacked and he had to do the first hour basically in front".

"He said he knew that's what he had to do to be in the break because nobody would let him go. So he had to be ahead of the breakaway when the breakaway was formed. So obviously he's out of GC. I'm a bit, I mean, obviously it's nice for him to win a stage, to bounce back after disappointment".

Ayuso is likely not returning to his GC ambitions during this race, but maintaining a free role, most likely combined with assisting João Almeida in his goal of finishing on the Vuelta podium, or potentially victory if Jonas Vingegaard shows bad signs in any of the many mountain stages that will soon come.

"I hope that UAE also will put him now in a helper's role because it looks to me more and more that Almeida is going to be the big challenger for Jonas Vingegaard together with Ciccone for the moment. But, you know, he needs people around him and Ayuso is one of those guys who could potentially be very crucial when they're on, not for the next stages, but on the mountain finishes".

"And yeah, listen, great win for him. You know, we said yesterday he's not a team player. I still think he's not a great team player, but what do we know? You know, we don't know what's going on within the team. I heard also that Almeida was very complimentary of Ayuso after the stage. There must be, I mean, I personally, I think that the whole Ayuso debate about whether he's a great teammate, whether he wants to leave the team, whether this or that, I think it's mostly on social media who are getting sucked into that debate".

Just this morning a report by AS suggests that Ayuso is very close to signing with Lidl-Trek, and that if this were to happen it would be a deal starting from 2026 onward, thus ending his current contract with UAE that lasts until 2028. But Bruyneel believes this discourse isn't affecting the team dynamics.

"And probably within the team, it's actually not so much the case. That's what I think is happening. And of course, you know, it makes for great titles and great newspapers. But listen, at the end of the day he's a good rider, right? This was actually, this was actually the stage with the highest elevation of the whole Vuelta a Espana today".

Bruyneel also commented on the GC fight, which saw João Almeida attack the final climb, followed only by Jonas Vingegaard and Giulio Ciccone. But due to the lack of collaboration, there wasn't any time gain on their rivals. Marc Soler launched a late attack that earned him a few seconds, but the GC remained rather the same - with the exception of David Gaudu and Antonio Tiberi's fall-out from contention.

"So there is this rivalry, lack of love-hate relationship. I mean, UAE doesn't like Visma and Visma doesn't like UAE. And today, for example, you could also see, you know, Almeida doesn't like Jonas (Bruyneel refers to Almeida's criticism of Vingegaard's lack of collaboration on the final climb, ed.). He said, you know, well, Jonas doesn't pull very often anyways, he either follows or he attacks".

Almeida's post-stage comments revealed dissatisfaction towards the former red jersey. "When he was asked the question, when he attacked, you know if he had expected Jonas to collaborate, he was I mean, he said 'well he didn't really have to', which is correct. You know, they, that's their strategy. But you could see it was like a little under the skin dig to Jonas".

"Like if this is the Vuelta and I'm pretty sure that nobody will pick up on this. If this quote is in the tour it is three [newspaper] pages. It is a three page article".