At 23, Juan Ayuso already has Grand Tour stage wins and WorldTour triumphs aplenty in his palmarès. But there can little doubt that both in terms of his immediate past and his short-term future, victories number 17 and 18 of his career at the Volta ao Algarve on Sunday have a very special place in the list.
"I wanted to win as early as possible for my new employer," Ayuso said according to Nieuwsblad, after claiming both the final day's win atop the Malhão and cementing his final victory overall. And on a day when that new employer, Lidl-Trek, also captured the final stage of the UAE Tour thanks to Jonathan Milan, with seven victories to date the German squad can move into March and the main European calendar with the pressure already significantly lower than some of their biggest rivals.
As for Ayuso, it's true that early-season success is far from unfamiliar, given he was able to secure both the Trofeo Laigueglia, Italy's first one-day race of the year, and the Faun Drome Classic in France in the space of four days in early March last year.
But to hit the bullseye with his debut race with Lidl-Trek - and having made no secret of his intentions, either, before the event, so there was no flying under the radar - was a great way to prove from the word go that he can continue where he left off in 2025 with a new squad. He also showed, too, that his hard work of three weeks at altitude training camp in Teide is already bearing fruit.
There were bound to be questions as to whether Ayuso could continue to rack up the triumphs after leaving UAE Team Emirates-XRG, both the most prolifically successful team of 2025 and 2024 and with the number one rider in the world, Tadej Pogačar, in its ranks. But the answers were there for all to see on the slopes of the Alto do Foia, where Ayuso took the lead and again in the triumph on the Malhão. And if finishing in yellow is always good news, to do with your arms in the air for one last victory, is even better.
"We showed we were the strongest team in the race," Ayuso said afterwards, "To get this win when we were challenged so hard, I'm very proud to be getting it
"The conclusion is more about how good the team rode, how well protected I was, not only today, but all week,” said Ayuso.
"Not everything was under control but they still managed to come back from this and put me in a position to be able to win. So I’m really happy I could get this win for them."
Next stop: Paris-Nice
For Lidl-Trek, given the likely absence of an injured Mads Pedersen from at least the early Classics, Ayuso's success could hardly have been more timely. At the same time, Ayuso's emphasis on his team's ability to support him underlines how much the spotlight has been on his integration into the squad - something which was, at times, subject to questions during his spell at UAE.
But on an individual level and in some dramatic mano-a-mano fights on the summits of the Algarve, if not always the winner, Ayuso managed to defend himself well against some formidable rivals. These included former teammate João Almeida, both the most successful week-long stage racer of 2025, even ahead of Pogačar, and second on home soil in the Algarve last year.
Equally, the fast-rising French star Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) despite imitating Pogačar and taking his first stage win of his career on the Foia on stage 2, was not able to fully Pogačar's wheeltracks and win overall in Algarve, too - again, thanks, to Ayuso's superiority, and where the Spaniard had the better of him on Malhão.
So with the questions about the speed of Ayuso's integration in his new team and putting his UAE past behind him for once and all fully resolved, after such a landmark success in Portugal, the question now has to be where he goes from here.
First stop is a debut in Paris-Nice, where despite his lack of experience in a race often won by a handful of seconds, both Ayuso's current form and his outright victory in 2025 in Italy's equivalent March WorldTour race, Tirreno-Adriatico, puts him straight in the spotlight for next month's biggest stage race. It's safe to say, in fact, that when Ayuso heads to the start line of the Race to the Sun in Achères on March 8, he'll automatically be a reference point.
That said, the opposition will likely be even more formidable in France than in Algarve. For one thing after his troubled season start, Jonas Vingegaard, who defeated Ayuso in 2024 in Tirreno-Adriatico, has just announced he's making his return to Paris-Nice. Fighting against the Danish star, as well as Almeida and Ineos duo Kévin Vauquelin and Oscar Onley once again, will be an even more challenging battleground.
Getting off to such a great start, though, is exactly what Ayuso - and his team - will have wanted. And it once again confirms him as a rider to watch all the way through 2026, too.
