Anatomy of a breakup
Juan Ayuso leaves UAE at the end of 2025
The Ayuso-UAE relationship has come to an end.
Juan Ayuso's first two years with UAE Team Emirates were like a dream come true. At the age of 19-20, for someone to burst onto the scene so consistently in a top-two team among the world's best climbers was an extraordinary privilege, even in the early 2020s. I thought it would work out very well, and until the spring of 2024, I ranked him well ahead of his teammate, Joao Almeida, with whom he had been fighting very seriously for the GC spot behind Tadej Pogacar.
Then something cracked.
And here come the very serious questions of interpretation: what broke in him and in the team? Did his poor performance in three consecutive Grand Tours break him? Did Isaac del Toro's even more rapid rise break him? Did what happened at the Giro break him? Or, in fact, did his own stubbornness and ambitious style cause him to collapse? I see a little bit of all of these in it. Even though UAE is now one of the most unique and successful teams of all time at a generational level, they still differentiate between victories. The big races keep them alive. And if someone fails there, it can mean a loss of confidence from the team management's point of view. Although the numbers don't show that Ayuso's career has stalled at a GC level, he couldn't have broken through a certain ceiling here among so many up-and-coming GC prospects. The attitude with which he did this here... We're talking about a 22-year-old. At 22, I wasn't mature at all. I can't hold that against him; I can't punish him because of that attitude.
How good an option Lidl-Trek is for him is another excellent and increasingly relevant question. It seems that neither Ciccone nor Skjelmose will be in the category of riders fighting for Grand Tour podiums, so at first glance, Ayuso might seem like a good deal - but if we look at how much everyone really does their part in the Grand Tours, even when the GC isn't the goal... it will be very difficult to reconcile him with any goal that focuses on Jonathan Milan or Mads Pedersen's points jersey. From that perspective, he is not a good fit there.
It is also questionable whether this could mean a paradigm shift in terms of contract length. Ayuso terminated his contract three years before it was due to expire, which is an incredibly long time. There are others on this roster who have seemingly endless contracts. Upon seeing this news, I would like to delve into the minds of Jan Christen and Pablo Torres and inquire whether their own medium- to long-term plans align with what the team has outlined for them. This is particularly interesting in the case of Christen, who is perhaps even more questioned by the public than Ayuso as to whether he is at UAE level in his racing mind, with using guts and brain at finales. Now is the time to prove the opposite and silence the haters.
The UAE empire is not about to fall apart now. But the first crack has appeared in this wall. The question is whether the team will continue to maintain its club model based on long-term contracts. Curating this would significantly preserve the team's number one status. It's a strong start to September, stronger than I would have thought.
