John Ayuso astonished the world of cycling in the last edition of La Vuelta, where the 20-year-old from Jávea fully entered the history of this sport by becoming the second youngest rider in history to climb on the podium of a Grand Tour, second only to the French Henri Cornet in the 1904 Tour de France. But beyond the result, even more impressive and exciting for the future are the data that the Spaniard signed in the Spanish round, a test in which he began to exploit the great potential that is presumed from the junior and sub-23 category, where concluded his training before making the leap to the World Tour with his victory in the Giro Baby.
The portal lantern rouge has produced an exhaustive analysis of the numbers obtained by Ayuso during the main ascents of La Vuelta, the best of his entire short career to date, which show the impressive power records achieved by the Spaniard in terms of the watt/kilo ratio. And it is that aside from Sierra Nevada, the UAE runner was in some brutal peaks in Peñas Blancas (6.13 w/kg), Collau Fancualla (6.18), Pico Jano and Piornal (6.23), Morcuera ( 6.31) and Les Praeres (6.56), to be a 19-year-old athlete in those days. To put all this into value, it should be noted that the winners of grand tours make a difference (always, of course, depending on the type of port and conditions such as weather and/or altitude) when they complete averages higher than 6.5 or 6 .6 w/kg between 20 and 25 minutes of effort, so the ceiling that Ayuso will be able to reach, that only counts as experience with a full season as a professional, seems impossible to imagine.
But the analysis goes even further. And it is that, numbers in hand, Ayuso is not only on a par with the two most precocious runners of recent times, Remco Evenepoel and Tadej Pogacar, but even improves its performance. At the same age as Juan, the Belgian had not even surpassed any of the Spanish’s best records (6.05 w/kg as the best mark in the ascent to Kartepe of the Tour of Turkey 2019), while the Slovenian, who also exploded in La Vuelta in 2019, did not reach the numbers of his teammate in Morcuera by staying at 6.09 w/kg (0.22 worse). pogacar got tremendous numbers in short ports of Andorra, such as Comella or Engolasters, but in levels of more prolonged effort, such as those faced by Ayuso, he loses in the comparison: 5.93 of Pogi in La Cubilla by Juan’s 6.13 in Peñas Blancas. It is not surprising that Matxín, Ayuso’s great discoverer, has always predicted a great future for his pupil and will renew him until 2028. Where will he raise the bar next year?