In the first week of the Vuelta, the transition in Spanish cycling has accelerated from the desert to reasoned illusion. Marc Soler and Jesús Herrada have covered the two years of drought of victories in the Tour, the Giro and the Vuelta and, above all, even without victories, Juan Ayuso and Carlos Rodríguez assume the transfer of powers from the best pedestal, their youth. 21-year-old Rodríguez, fourth overall two and a half minutes behind Evenepoel, and 19-year-old Ayuso, fifth with a similar difference. Two treasures that were an open secret, the replacement of Contador, ‘Purito’ and Valverde in the Spanish platoon.
Enric Mas, 27, speaks from Alicante in a videoconference with the press and expresses that he still has unanswered questions about his performance, uses the ‘day to day’ joker and says that he would like to play the Vuelta “all or nothing” , but that he cannot do it because Movistar needs him to secure the points that the current second place gives him.
One thing is clear to the telephone leader. «Ayuso and Carlos Rodríguez are resurrecting Spanish cycling and I am delighted. Soon they will win very important races.”
Juan Ayuso could have been a Movistar runner a few seasons ago. The team invited him to share a few days in the pre-season training camp with world champion Alejandro Valverde. The same invitation was extended by Josean Matxín’s UAE (Emirates). Despite the cycling tradition of the Unzué group and the presence of Valverde, Ayuso decided on the Arabs. “He convinced me more than what I saw,” he acknowledged in an interview with ABC.
Ayuso does not fit with the cycling stigma: family with precedents in this sport, rural environment, certain financial need. The broker’s father had an opportunity as CEO of Randstad in Atlanta (United States) and the family moved to Georgia. Ayuso, who was born in Barcelona due to his father’s work, lived in the United States for five years. He returned to Madrid in 2009, but settled in Jávea (Alicante) due to his parents’ interest in him not losing tone in the English he had learned in Atlanta.
A friend from Jávea, Mateo, took him to a municipal school and from there he lit the flame of cycling. Physical wonder, the director of him Matxín remembers that “he walked in the lower categories, such was his superiority.” The director of the UAE, a specialist in monitoring young cyclists and lower categories, hired him for his team and has renewed him in a long-term commitment, 2028. The cyclist’s father, now retired, is his representative and a new fan of riding a bike for his son’s profession.
The banner of a prosperous future for Spanish cycling, Ayuso rode on loan in the Italian Colpack last year and his results already announced the replacement. He won the Giro Baby at the age of 18, a ten-stage Giro d’Italia for those under 23.
In his first course with the UAE, the cyclist based in Jávea won the Guecho Circuit, a few weeks before the Vuelta in which he is now fifth. «I believe that we can have a future with Carlos and with me, also with Raul Garcia Pierna, Igor Arrieta… they are very good runners -says Juan Ayuso, a great fan of Formula 1-. Carlos and I are evolving at a faster pace than normal. But I have run in lower categories and I know the people, and I think that Raúl in two or three years is going to be a bullet. We are a generation that comes from a very good time where we have won everything, and now little by little we are going to get our heads up.
Carlos Rodríguez is not from a cycling family either. Since Ayuso signed up for the bike school in his town, Almunecar (Granada)and began a pilgrimage path with his parents through the weekend races of fingerlings and juveniles in Andalusia and later, throughout Spain.
His virtues led him to the casting of a structure that filters talents throughout Spain, the subsidiary teams managed by Alberto Contador. Enric Mas, Juanpe López, Fernando Barceló and now Carlos Rodríguez have come from there.
A member of the Contador pack, educated and trained by the former Spanish champion, Carlos Rodríguez was inevitably seduced by an economic and sports offer from the giant Ineos in 2019. Froome’s Ineos, Egan Bernal, Geraint Thomas and other stars of the British formation.
He signed a four-year contract, ending in 23, and with the Spanish coach of the English team Xabier Artetxe, he met the marginal gains of the group that won the Tour de France uninterruptedly from 2012 (Bradley Wiggins) to 2019 (Bernal). “I can say that I have learned from the best,” acknowledges the Andalusian.
Rodríguez shows a formation similar to that of Ayuso. Bilingual with English, mechanical engineering student At the University of Malaga, a guitar and piano apprentice, the man from Granada exhibits in this Vuelta the conditions that drive him to another dimension.
