Anyone attentive to provincial startlists will have noticed a running theme in the opening months of the 2023 season.
At the Volta a Valenciana, the first European stage race of the year, Juan Ayuso was scheduled to compete for UAE-Team Emirates.
But then his name was chalked off.
Seven weeks later at the Volta a Catalunya, the race in which Ayuso finished fifth in last season, his name was once again one of seven UAE riders down to compete.
But, like Valencia, he never did. At the ongoing Itzulia Basque Country, it was the same story.
Since Ayuso finished third at last year’s Vuelta, the then-19 year old becoming the youngest ever podium finisher at the race, the Catalan-Valencian has not ridden a race. At the time of publication, that’s 208 days.
Why? “Before the Volta a Valenciana, he had some discomfort in his heel and we recommended him to stop training for a few days. The discomfort hasn’t gone away, and he continues to stop training to try and recover,” Joxean Fernández Matxin, the general manager of UAE-Team Emirates, told Cycling Weekly.
“At the start it was an ache, and when there isn’t pain you don’t look for other solutions. The team doctor controlled it. But now we’re searching for other solutions.”
The exact injury has been described as tendonitis that, in most cases, heals within two to three weeks. The problem for Ayuso is that the aches keep returning, thus preventing him from racking up more than two weeks of successive training.
“Until he has done four weeks of consecutive training, we are not going to set a calendar for him,” Matxin said. “I think he’s currently in his third week of training [in a row] and if he completes a fourth week we’ll design a calendar.”
Ayuso’s big aim for the season is to return to the Vuelta and try and better his third-place. He's even been given the seal of approval by Tadej Pogačar. But with the WorldTour season having started almost three months ago, and all other general classification riders having begun their season, Ayuso is starting on the back foot.
The team are hopeful Ayuso will compete before June, but they will not apply any pressure on a rider they have contracted through to the end of 2028.
“He doesn’t need to race,” Matxin said. “We prefer to have him calm, to trust in him, and we have him for seven or eight years so we cannot demand him to rush or to hurry his recovery, and we cannot accelerate the process. When he has a perfect training base, then we will have a calendar of races.”
Ayuso splits his time between Jávea in Alicante and Andorra, and he has expressed his frustration to his team. “He’s wanting to compete, he’s not wanting to be in the doctors, and he doesn’t want to have niggles,” Matxin added. “It’s difficult when you are in pain, but when you don’t have pain, that’s the moment we have to search for other solutions.”
In his debut season as a pro, Ayuso was often hit by illness, including testing positive for Covid at the Vuelta. He was, however, able to continue due to having a low viral load. At a team press conference in December, he told journalists: “I’m a rider who doesn’t like normal things like paracetamol or ibuprofen. Even if in a circumstance you should [take them], I don’t like taking anything.”
