Cor Vos
This transfer season has gotten a lot more interesting during the ongoing Vuelta a España.
Four years after his WorldTour debut at UAE Team Emirates and three years after he signed a massive longterm contract meant to keep him with the team until 2028, Juan Ayuso is instead heading out the door at the end of the season. UAE announced on Monday that rider and team had agreed to part ways at the conclusion of the 2025 campaign, although Ayuso is continuing on at the Vuelta a España, where he just won his second stage, after dropping out of GC contention.
Even before he was officially a free agent, Ayuso was already the subject of a flurry of transfer rumors. Now, he is clear to sign with another team, and for all his inconsistency and the drama he has courted while at UAE, the enigmatic Spaniard has to be seen as the hottest commodity on the current transfer market.
‘They want to damage my image’: UAE departure announcement took Ayuso by surprise
The Spaniard describes UAE Team Emirates as ‘a dictatorship’ and that an earlier version of the team’s statement was ‘much worse’.
For those wondering how someone so inconsistent could be worthy of that label, we’ll justify our opinion before we go any further. In an age of unprecedented dominance by a tiny handful of riders, Ayuso represents rare potential. He landed on the Vuelta podium in his Grand Tour debut back in 2022, and although he has not repeated that feat since, he has shown flashes of brilliance in Grand Tour stages and one-week races to suggest that he has what it takes to contend in three-week events. Still only 22, he is theoretically a long way off from his peak.
Ayuso is often mentioned in the same breath as UAE teammate João Almeida, who has also come up short in several attempts at Grand Tour leadership. At 27, however, Almeida seems less likely to evolve into more than what he already is, a very talented racer who can reliably be counted on to deliver one-week wins and Grand Tour top 10s in addition to strong support for his teammates. Ayuso’s ceiling, on the other hand, is still an unknown, a tantalizing prospect for teams in need. Maybe the grass will be greener if he comes over to your side.
Stage winners, let alone GC contenders, don’t grow on trees.
In other words, those squads content to have a fifth-place finisher in a Grand Tour might shy away from spending the considerable sum that Ayuso will command on a rider who has been so inconsistent, but teams looking for a bona fide Grand Tour contender won’t find them growing on trees, and Ayuso might still become that rider. He is a high-risk, high-reward prospect, and he will have several suitors. So where does hit fit in best?
Let’s take a closer look at the possibilities, starting with the team that seems most strongly linked to Ayuso in the transfer rumor mill: Lidl-Trek.
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