When he was a child, Giovanni Lombardi told his parents that when he grew up he would open a store to sell ideas, what do you want me to tell you how, but when he hung up his bike he ended up opening an expensive shoe and boot store in Chueca, at 1,500 euros a pair, in which Boris Izaguirre wore shoes at the beginning of the century. Despite his success, he closed the store and recovered the children’s project of selling ideas, and he is now living from it, and this is what the director of the cyclists tells us while his client Juan Ayuso puts into practice the last pearl of his magazine, an obligatory act of contrition, a handwritten declaration regretting having said what he said in September, that the United Arab Emirates was a dictatorship, when during the Vuelta it was officially announced that he had broken his contract and that he left Tadej Pogacar’s team. team.
“My time in the United Arab Emirates team marked me and will always be a fundamental part of my sporting career. During these formative years, I learned professional discipline and vision. The members of the team, especially President Matar and Mauro Gianetti, contributed to my success and helped me become the cyclist I am today”, reads in English the best Spanish level cyclist native of Atlanta in front of around twenty journalists on the fourth day of concentration of his new team, Lidl, at the Marriott at the Dénia golf club. “I also want to address and put an end once and for all to what happened last September. At that time, I said something that I didn’t really believe because I was under pressure and nervous. This does not reflect my true feelings and I consider the matter completely closed. I want to end this chapter on good terms with the UAE.”
Lidl’s performance director, Josu Larrazabal, is the first to thank him for the gesture – reading what should be said so as not to make a mistake in saying what should be kept silent – and congratulates the cyclist. “It shows his maturity,” says the Basque coach, who decided that his compatriot Aritz Arberas would replace Íñigo San Millán as Ayuso’s personal coach. “He’s young, he’s 23, but he’s had to go through a lot of situations. We can’t forget that they are who they are, that they’re children, that at some point you can say something that might upset the other a little, but you have to move on. The fact that he said it publicly and moved on says a lot about Juan.”
To move forward, Ayuso must close the door to a few years in the United Arab Emirates that many are talking about – “unfairly,” he says – based on a few photos, which he says are misinterpreted and generate sambenitos, a gesture in the Galibier to his partner Almeida to take over from Pogacar; a gesture in the stereo of Siena during the last Giro, a fall and an attack from his teammate Del Toro that the leaders of his UAE refuse to stop. “I think an image was generated in the press that is not reality. I wanted to erase everything from my past. Say what I had to say for one reason or another. Close the subject and that’s it. I find myself now in an environment where people are really going to see who I am. It’s a matter of time before those who think that way, that I am an ambitious individualist, see how I am and in that sense I am very calm,” he said later, in a conversation with EL PAÍS. “And please don’t ask me more.”
— Just a few doubts. Have you spoken with Pogacar since his departure became official?
— No, not really. A little when it coincided between the World Cup and the European Championship, but nothing more.
— Did Matxin and Giannetti, your bosses in the United Arab Emirates, thank you for this statement?
-No. I don’t expect anything from them.
Lidl, directly owned by the German supermarket group, wants to build its long-term future in stage races – translated in direct language, without euphemisms, winning the Tour – around Ayuso, who accepts a role for which he is committed until 2030, earning almost double what he earned in the United Arab Emirates. “A new beginning…? I don’t know how to say it… I don’t know in philosophy how it will be said, but it’s a bit of a beginning and a continuation because I continue to do a bit of the same thing, that is to say cycling and competing, but in a totally different and new environment…”, he said. “Now it puts me in a bit of a complicated situation, not complicated at all, but in a position to say, well, now I have a lot more support, a lot more help, a lot more resources available to me…I’d better give up. It’s added pressure, but I want to use all of this as an advantage and not have any negative pressure on me.”
In his first season with Lidl, Ayuso will make his debut in February in the Volta al Algarve, he will race at Paris-Nice in March, in April at Itzulia, Flecha and Liège, in June at the Dauphiné and in July he will return to the Tour, as leader, two years after leaving with covid the year of his debut. “But the real leader of the Tour will be Mads Pedersen, who will fight to win the green jersey,” objects Ayuso in a way, giving maximum visibility to the Dane, former world champion, true spiritual leader. “A very smart mention of Juan… Do you see how good he is? reflects Larrazabal. “Mads is everything in this team and he was the first to welcome Juan and make him feel like he’s part of the team, and he hugged him and the first thing he said to him was, ‘whatever you need during the Tour, we’ll be there to give it to you.’ And the Tour team will also include Dane Mattias Skjelmose and Italian Giulio Ciccone, and like Red Bull, Lidl will become a bloc in trying to end Pogacar’s dictatorship.
“Since I started cycling, I have always won in every category I have competed in and the pressure has increased as I have progressed. I have always lived with pressure,” says a cyclist many traditionalists criticize for skipping stages since he stood on the Vuelta podium at the age of 19. “When you’re a cadet, every race is a bit like the Tour de France. It’s like experiencing the same thing, but on a different scale. I grew up living with it and knowing how to adapt to it and I think that now thanks to that, I know how to handle it a little more naturally. Well, but when you’re ready to get on the podium, I don’t know, I don’t see why you won’t start, I don’t see the point in stopping. Why?
The plan for the team led by Italian Luca Guercilena is about patience, that the time will come, that no one expects him to win the Tour this year, and Ayuso, the child prodigy famous for his ambition and urgency, welcomes it. “I’m not saying it’s not realistic to win the Tour in 2026, but if Tadej is like he is in 2025, he will still be at the top, so the realistic goal will be to get on the podium. It will only be the first Tour de France on his own,” explains the rider, who will only be able to wear the new team’s clothes on January 1. The dream is something really big, and people may even make fun of you. I know that I am a very ambitious person and sometimes optimistic, but also realistic at the same time and it is not realistic for me this year to think that yes or yes I will win the Tour. But that motivation is there and that hope is there.
In January 2022, Ayuso, 19 years and four months old, felt so close to Pogacar that he even challenged him by raising the Tariff pass. The Slovenian, already winner of the Tour, was only 15 seconds ahead of him; 24m 50s, record for the climb; 25m 4s for Ayuso. Both moved around 6.5 watts per kilo of power. At over 23 kilometers per hour.
— Do you want to try again there?
—Rates are where we all test ourselves. I’m sure I’ll do some testing. So far, I’m getting better every year. And this year, I don’t know if I will surpass Tadej’s record, but at least I will surpass myself.
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