There's a new wonderkid on the scene joining UAE Team Emirates and the Spanish are going mad over him
UAE Team Emirates have already signed the 18-year-old on a five-year contract.
Cycling isn’t short of young sensations right now, and there’s a new one about to enter the WorldTour peloton: Juan Ayuso.
The Spanish 18-year-old has been in imperious form during the 2021 season in his first year in the U23 ranks, winning five UCI races including the recent Baby Giro in which he claimed three stages.
In dominating the event, he became the youngest ever winner of the famous race and became the first Spanish rider to do so.
Ayuso has been riding for Colpack Ballan since the start of the season, the U23 development team of UAE Team Emirates.
He signed a five-year contract with UAE Team Emirates last year (although, given his age, it was his father who actually penned the deal) with an agreement that he would join the team of Tadej Pogačar in August.
However, following his Baby Giro victory, that has been advanced and he officially joined the team on June 13.
Who is he and why are the Spanish so excited?
His rise has captured the attention of the Spanish cycling public throughout the season, with the press in his home country obsessed by his talent and potential.
Get The Leadout Newsletter
The latest race content, interviews, features, reviews and expert buying guides, direct to your inbox!
As well as daily national sports publications such as Marca and AS repeatedly writing articles on him in the past few months, Spain’s biggest newspaper El País has also been profiling him. Marca recently declared that “the future of Spanish cycling is here now.”
Joxean Fernández Matxin, manager of UAE Team Emirates, told AS: “In the lower categories, he was winning with so much ease. He was attacking 60 kilometres from the finish line and arriving alone.
“Why does a team like UAE sign a contract that is so long? Well, because he has class, ambition, a winning personality and character. He is a pure talent and this you can’t buy.”
Ayuso shares the same coach, Íñigo San Millán, as reigning Tour de France champion Pogačar, himself only 22.
San Millán revealed to Marca that Ayuso “has the conditions of Tadej: he produces 6.2 watts/kg. He goes well in the mountains, on the flats, in time trials, although Pogačar is calmer than him.”
Ayuso, who calls Alberto Contador his hero, is a climber who remains seated, but with a tall figure of 1.83m and a weight of 65kg, he has also been likened to Mathieu van der Poel.
Comparisons between him and his new team-mate Pogačar have already started, but Matxin dismissed them. “He must learn how to live with the interest that he has created. When comparisons are made, it does annoy him. What we want is that this is the only Juan Ayuso.”
He will start racing for his new team soon and will be given a predominantly Spanish calendar, which could include Clásica San Sebastián. It is not expected that he will ride the Vuelta a España, though.
Ayuso, who was born in Barcelona but grew up in Atlanta in the United States until he was eight before spending the rest of his childhood in Jávea in Alicante, possesses not only obvious talent but commitment that has shocked even his coach.
San Millán told Marca: “If you tell him to do four hours, he will do four hours and one minute in case he had to brake at a traffic light.
“He is the most professional rider I have seen in my life, but you have to stop him because he does not want to stop.”
In a separate interview with El País, his coach added that “Juan wants to know everything in detail. He has a great appetite to know and understand the physiological, performance and training details. He is intelligent, applied, disciplined and methodical to the point of boredom.”
It is a description that Ayuso has not denied, telling the same newspaper: “It is not just me who has this new scientific and technological vision of cycling. The fashion was started by Remco Evenepoel three years ago.
“Those of us born in 2001 and 2002 are from a very good generation. In three or four years we will all be at the top.”
Thank you for reading 20 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access
Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1
*Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription
Join now for unlimited access
Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1
A freelance sports journalist and podcaster, you'll mostly find Chris's byline attached to news scoops, profile interviews and long reads across a variety of different publications. He has been writing regularly for Cycling Weekly since 2013. In 2024 he released a seven-part podcast documentary, Ghost in the Machine, about motor doping in cycling.
Previously a ski, hiking and cycling guide in the Canadian Rockies and Spanish Pyrenees, he almost certainly holds the record for the most number of interviews conducted from snowy mountains. He lives in Valencia, Spain.
-
The land of legends: Riding on Tadej Pogačar's home roads
As part of our New Worlds issue in Travel Month, Chris Marshall Bell travelled to Slovenia to find out why it produces so many WorldTour riders per head of population.
By Chris Marshall-Bell Published
-
SBT GRVL lives! The story of just how close the gravel community came to losing one of its biggest events
Here are all the details on what the revamped event will look like in 2025 as government headwinds continue to push against the event
By Logan Jones-Wilkins Published
-
Is this the £17,000 bike that will carry Tadej Pogačar to the rainbow jersey?
Colnago launch special edition V4RS Tadej ahead of the elite men’s road race at the World Championships
By Tom Thewlis Published
-
'The chance is there': Tadej Pogačar builds World Championships form with dominant GP Montréal victory
Slovenian full of 'confidence and motivation' after winning final warm up race before Zurich
By Tom Thewlis Last updated
-
Simon Yates says he took a pay cut in order to join Visma-Lease a Bike
32-year-old says it was now or never as he gets set to leave Jayco AIUla after eleven years
By Tom Thewlis Published
-
'Four months ago I was in the ICU': Jay Vine wins for the first time since suffering spinal fractures in Itzulia horror crash
Australian suffered serious injuries in the Itzulia Basque Country incident
By Tom Thewlis Published
-
A UAE Emirates Tour de France podium clean sweep is a real possibility
Adam Yates, Tadej Pogačar and João Almeida are all hitting form at the perfect time with the Florence Grand Départ fast approaching
By Tom Thewlis Published
-
Spotted: Tadej Pogačar running prototype Enve TT bars, which have seen UAE net time trial podiums all season
A development project, the extensions are not yet commercially available, but Enve says it’s ‘excited by the results and believe the initial goals have been achieved’
By Anne-Marije Rook Published
-
Meet Vegard Stake Laengen, Tadej Pogačar's right-hand man at Grand Tours
The Norwegian bodyguard has been present in each of the Slovenian's Tour de France participations, and is now at the Giro d'Italia, too
By Adam Becket Published
-
'I pulled it off and turned everything around' - Brandon McNulty on the ride that changed him
US star grabbed his first ever Grand Tour win at last year’s Giro d’Italia
By Tom Thewlis Published