After a rollercoaster first week of the Giro d’Italia, Juan Ayuso (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) brushed away any doubts about his condition with a stunning stage victory in the race’s first mountaintop finish, using a Primož Roglič-style late uphill sprint attack to distance the entire field on Friday’s stage 7.
On a day when over a dozen riders were still in the front group when the stage reached the final kilometre of the Tagliacozzo ascent, the 22-year-old’s ability to time his late attack to perfection and drop rivals with far greater Grand Tour palmares was impressive enough.
But the fact that Ayuso’s all-out last kilometre move was exactly the same kind of blazing late charge to victory that has served Giro d’Italia favourite Roglič so well in the past was lost on nobody either.
The Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe team leader finished fourth and moved into the lead after stage 7, but the way Ayuso tore a page out of Roglic’s playbook to claim the win feels like even more evidence that it’s the Spaniard, not the Slovenian, whose fortunes are on the ascent.
“I spent the whole climb following him [Roglič] because on these types of finishes he’s always the strongest,” said Ayuso, who beat Roglič in one very similar finish in the Volta a Catalunya this spring, only to lose at a second.
“I knew I had to be very careful and stay behind him and then when the attacks started, I didn’t know if he was waiting for me or playing a bit.
“But my distance [for the sprint] arrived, anyway, and I didn’t wait for the other guys any more. I knew I had to go.”
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Ayuso’s move came after a second attack by Egan Bernal (Ineos Grenadiers), shooting past Antonio Tiberi (Bahrain Victorious) and Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) to go clear for the win. UAE further underlined their dominance with Isaac del Toro – for whom UAE had initially been working to try and get the stage, manager Joxean Fernández Matxin said later – finishing second.
It has not been an easy start to the Giro for Ayuso, who crashed on stage 1 and then suffered a further setback by losing a significant amount of time to Roglič – whom he later said he had thought he would beat – on stage 2’s time trial in Tirana.
But rather than drift further out of the picture, taking the first Grand Tour stage victory of his career on Friday represents a significant bounceback for Ayuso, as well as being a landmark in his progress as a pro.
“It’s not only a victory, it’s my first victory in a Grand Tour,” he pointed out. “I always remember my first pro victory in Getxo [in 2022-Ed.] so it’s something I’ll always remember.
“I knew I could do an attack of 30 or 45 seconds but that on this kind of finish it was most important to just do one big attack and make it count. I knew I had to wait.”
After such an important triumph, it was noticeable that the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider now had no problem confirming that he is looking for the GC victory. This was a step up in his initial ambitions, which were simply to go for the podium, at least. But he was also adamant that despite UAE’s considerable show of strength on stage 7, it was still up to Roglič, as maglia rosa, and his team to control the race.
“In my opinion, we’re here with the aim of winning, but even so, the weight of the race” – as in, the responsibility for controlling it – “should be on Roglič,” he argued.
UAE’s domination and strength in numbers can hardly fail to impress, even so. Although time gaps are still minimal, Ayuso is in second at just four seconds, the fast up-and-coming Del Toro in third at nine seconds, McNulty lying seventh and Adam Yates remaining a GC contender as well, at 48 seconds.
“Del Toro is not a rival, for now he’s showing that he’s super-strong, he was the same in Tirreno, he always delivers,” Ayuso said. “That he was second behind me shows he’s one of the strongest and we’ll be able to use him to put pressure on our rivals.”
As for the overall UAE team leader and 2024 Giro d’Italia champion, Ayuso said that he had not talked with Tadej Pogačar this year about how to win a Grand Tour.
“I haven’t seen him since training camp in January apart from about 30 seconds when we crossed paths in Sierra Nevada,” he recounted, “so for now there’s been no time to talk.”
But in any case, the 22-year-old Spaniard has shown already in this Giro that he has known how to turn around his early setbacks to gain some fresh momentum as the key challenges approach.
“It was really important not only to get the win, but also to recover time I’d lost in the TT,” Ayuso said. “For sure that gives me a lot of confidence for the coming days. Tomorrow [Saturday] we’ll try to save the day and then we’re onto Siena and the gravel stage. It’ll be a very tense, difficult day, but I hope I can save the day there, too.”
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