Talented young Spaniard Juan Ayuso has blasted to victory in the Tour de Romandie’s stage 3, an 18.8-kilometre individual time trial, and moved into the overall lead.
Riding his first race since he claimed third overall in the Vuelta a España last year, Ayuso finished five seconds ahead on the rugged TT course of Movistar’s Matteo Jorgenson and 12 seconds up on UAE teammate Adam Yates.
Second in Thursday’s bunch sprint, Ayuso, 20, has now gone one better to claim the first WorldTour win of his career.
Ayuso now leads the six-day Tour de Romandie into the toughest mountain stage on Saturday, with a summit finish at Thyon 2000.
But come what may, for the young Spaniard, the result is a massive morale boost after a difficult first third of the season where a niggling nerve injury in one leg has kept him out of racing for months.
“I am getting better, but the legs are getting worse each day,” Ayuso said afterward, striking a cautious note as he was speaking before knowing he definitively had the fastest time.
“I’m starting to suffer a lot, and I feel like my form is still not there. But I'll be happy if I keep improving every day, even if my sensations are that I’m on the limit.”
“I went out full gas because I knew I had a good time in the intermediate, I was close [to the best], so I knew if I took some risks, I could maybe get the win.”
How it unfolded
Sergio Higuita (Bora-Hansgrohe) was one early non-starter, with Anthony Perez and former Romandie podium finisher Ion Izagirre (both Cofidis) also out of the race after they tested positive for COVID.
Early on Marco Brenner (DSM) clocked the provisional best time of 25:45 on a course where a long, draggy seven-kilometre ascent through the verdant Swiss countryside and a fast, technical drop back down to Chàtel-Saint-Denis comprised the two key challenges.
Brenner’s best result stood for the best part of an hour until former U-23 World Time Trial Champion Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) set the best split time at km 9.4, then followed that up by crossing the line six seconds faster.
Bjerg was not overly happy with the second segment of the course, saying afterwards that “it’s a WorldTour race, everybody will take risks on a downhill like this,” and naming World Time Trial Champion Tobias Foss (Jumbo-Visma) as the big favourite still to finish.
However, gifted American allrounder Will Barta (Movistar), still on the hunt for the first win of his career, squeezed ahead of Bjerg by one second at the mid-stage checkpoint and then claimed the new best provisional time by five seconds.
The big GC favourites were all yet to come, though, and the excellent times clocked by Gino Mader (Bahrain Victorious) and Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) mid-stage had Barta, sitting in the winner’s hot seat, shaking his head in anticipated disappointment. Yates and Mader faded slightly on the descent, though, and instead, it was the American’s compatriot and teammate Matteo Jorgenson who delivered a devastatingly consistent performance, ousting his fellow American from the number one spot with a stunning 13-second advantage at the finish.
Jorgenson successfully fended off challenges by Italian National Champion Matteo Sobrero (Jayco-AIUIa), but there was little he could do to prevent Ayuso from pushing his time down from top place on the leaderboard by five seconds.
Two of the final finishers, Foss and former race leader British National TT Champ Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers), were not wholly at home on a course where the long early climb left the specialists at something of a disadvantage. Instead, Ayuso clinched the win and moved up from fourth overall - coincidentally, his final placing in the 2022 race - to the leader’s position in the process.
With the time trial positioned mid-way through the race rather than its usual final day slot,
Ayuso now leads Romandie into its crunch 161 kilometres climbing stage on Saturday with an 18-second advantage on Jorgenson and a 19-second advantage over Foss.
It remains to be seen how Ayuso will handle the final mammoth 20.7-kilometre ascent to Thyon 2000, but after defying expectations with this spectacular comeback victory, for the young Spaniard, any success in Romandie from hereon will surely feel like the cherry on top of an already impressively very large cake.
Results
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