Juan Ayuso has just turned 22 years old but he seems like a veteran who remembers his past with nostalgia for times that will not return. “I see the people already arriving, who are younger than me and every time I feel older, every time people arrive younger, every time they perform sooner, so every time it seems that everything happens very quickly,” acknowledges the cyclist. , who makes his debut in a World Cup with the senior team. “But I also know that I have many opportunities ahead of me, many years in which if things don’t work out I will have new opportunities and that also gives a lot of peace of mind. I’m not in a hurry. The thing is that you always have ambition and you always want things to turn out.”
Ayuso, a professional since the age of 19, embodies like no other the hallmarks that define the so-called pandemic generation, young people who were caught in the prime of the strange 2020 confinement that condemned everyone to a forced and fierce individualism. adolescence, already wanting to grow a mustache, riders who, like the three-year-younger Pablo Torres, come to cycling with the conviction and the need to be the best, the champions. “You don’t want to be a professional to be gregarious or to work for others, even if in the end you end up doing it because there are better ones,” says Torres. “But if at 18 you don’t think you’re going to be the best in the world, you don’t make the sacrifices you do to be a cyclist.”
In three years as a professional cyclist, Ayuso has experienced accelerated immersion in extreme situations and moods. He has been third in the Vuelta of his debut, that of 2022, at the age of 19; He has won a Tour of the Basque Country in which all the best in the world, Roglic, Evenepoel, Vingegaard, fell; He has fought face to face with Vingegaard in the Tirreno-Adriatico, he has debuted in the Tour in the team of God Pogacar, he has suffered from jealousy, envy, slander, illnesses, he has been an Olympian in Paris and he has learned, perhaps too quickly , too young, when we all believe we are immortal, we are so strong that death is part of life. 15 months ago, he triumphed in the queen stage of the Tour de Suisse, while behind him, Gino Mäder, who was chasing him, fell and died on the descent of the giant Albula Pass. On Friday he trained on the ups and downs of the circuit that this Sunday (1:15 p.m., Teledeporte) will crown a new world champion. He passed through the curves that cross the Küsnacht forest, a rapid descent towards Lake Zurich, and he still did not know that the day before, hidden there from everyone’s sight, forgotten, the Swiss Muriel Furrer was dying and dying at the age of 18, that he had opened his head against a tree just 10 kilometers from his house, in Egg. In the afternoon, when the entire World Cup squad is already condemned to sadness, to rage, for the death of the colleague, Ayuso cannot prevent a tone of indignation from making her voice tremble.
“There are times when misfortunes like this are inevitable. Because of the speed, because of the protections we wear, it is a risky sport and it happens and will continue to happen, but there are other times it happens and there is a lot of room to have prevented it from happening,” he says. “And then, once it happens, the girl has that injury but she is already unattended for an hour until they miss her and the helicopter finds her. For me it is totally a shame, something inadmissible, something that is difficult for me to understand. Maybe if the earpiece hadn’t been banned, she could have said something, someone could have warned on the radio, like we do in WorldTour races. Or if we carried GPS trackers, because we don’t carry any trace on the bike beyond a chip that only serves when you cross the finish line. It’s a shame…”
The voices, not only of Ayuso but of more riders, have reached the ears of David Lappartient, the president of the International Cycling Union (UCI), who does not give them much value. “We can’t draw general conclusions from just one case,” he says. “Sometimes it is the earpiece that causes accidents. In this case it makes no sense to comment because we still don’t know exactly what happened. The police are investigating. Let’s let them do their job.”
The UCI has left the flags at half-mast, turned off the festive music at the finish line and canceled the World Cup gala dinner, but the races continue and, after a Saturday dedicated to women, they will reach their zenith in the 274 kilometers (4,500 meters of altitude) of the men’s race that will be “a real battle”, predicts Lappartient, and that should, unless everyone is wrong, crown Tadej Pogacar, one more notch on the path of the Slovenian, skipper of the cycling of the 21st century at the age of 25, towards Eddy Merckx’s Gotha. Only the Caníbal (and 50 years ago) and the Irish meteor Stephen Roche (in 1987), have won the Giro, Tour and World Championship in the same year. Pogacar is one step away from the rainbow. He has in his favor a route that fits his style of unstoppable distant attacks like a glove and the fervent adoration of his rivals who, with the exception of the challengers Remco Evenepoel (double Olympic champion in a Paris with Pogacar absent, and a rainbow time trial on his golden bicycle, and his helmet) and Mathieu van der Poel, the current world champion, and the last winner, also, in Flanders and in Roubaix, resignedly accept their superiority.
“It has been a pleasant surprise to see that the circuit is harder than I thought. It is going to be a very selective and very tactical World Cup. It is a circuit of strength, of watts, it is not a circuit of agile small-plate climbers. The climbs are short and explosive and in the plateau “You have to use intelligence,” analyzes Ayuso, who comes from winning the Vuelta a Luxembourg time trial a week ago and is one more in a Spanish eight made up only of figures, leaders without gregarious and completed by Mikel Landa, Enric Mas, Carlos Rodríguez, Roger Adrià, Pablo Castrillo, Pello Bilbao and Alex Aranburu. “What will I do when Pogacar leaves? Well, I’ve never been in that situation. First, because he is my teammate and, second, because it is my first World Cup. My mentality is not to give up, but then you have to see yourself there, and if he is ahead and you are behind with the hyperjust forces, you will have to be realistic, but the initial idea is no, and go out and compete for the gold.”
Ayuso left the Tour halfway through with Covid and between comments that highlighted his alleged unwillingness to work for Pogacar in the UAE and that reflect the difficulty of making room for the ambitions of as many figures as the team accumulates, and a fourth name that is circulating A strong candidate for the World Championship is the Swiss Marc Hirschi, also from the UAE and winner of the last five races he has run. “95% of everything that has been said, everything that has been published, all the comments, are things that are not true. “I have a very clear conscience and that is why it has not affected me,” says Ayuso, who in 2025 will surely not return to the Tour with Pogacar, but will lead the team in the Giro. “Any person with ambition always wants to become the best and if the best is there, then things can always happen, but I think that within the team we have done very well. The races I go to, I will have the responsibility, the freedom to go for it. “I will go with great enthusiasm and with great desire.”
