One is a former Volta a Catalunya winner, the opposite has the most effective monitor information of victories this spring. So it is no small marvel that because the Volta a Catalunya heads into the excessive mountains on Wednesday, UAE Team Emirates-XRG are intent on utilizing each Adam Yates and Juan Ayuso as joint GC candidates.
Ayuso, having picked up a three-second time bonus on stage 2, is at present mendacity fifth total, 13 seconds down on race chief Matthew Brennan (Jumbo-Lease a Bike). Yates was caught on the mistaken aspect of a late cut up on the rain-soaked finale to stage 1. But he stays in competition, simply 18 seconds additional again and 31 down on the race chief on GC. Both have greater than sufficient expertise to justify their standing, with Yates the general winner of Volta a Catalunya 4 years in the past on the head of a three-rider Grand Slam for his then group, Ineos Grenadiers.
“Adam is getting there and steadily enhancing, as he at all times does, and Juan is in a formidably good situation. The fact is the state of affairs is nice for each of them,” group supervisor Joxean Fernández Matxin instructed Cyclingnews on the stage 2 begin in Banyoles.
“When Tadej [Pogačar] is racing, clearly he is the only chief for us. But right here Juan is clearly a pacesetter right here due to his situation, and Adam’s co-leader as nicely.”
“I feel the way in which biking is raced lately, it is essential for a group to have varied high names, not only one, as contenders.”
Rather than letting Yates and Ayuso’s performances on the Volta’s first summit end at la Molina on stage 3 determine the UAE GC hierarchy for the race – the traditional ‘the highway will determine’ philosophy for a lot of groups’ dilemmas about race management – Matxin stated, “That’s not the way in which we ever take a look at that in UAE. It’s not even mentioned like that.
“If Adam has an opportunity, he’ll take it, and if Juan has that likelihood, he’ll take it too. But the chief right here, and at all times, is UAE Team Emirates.”
Outside Catalunya, Matxin underlined there was nonetheless no information but on Pogačar’s potential participation in Paris-Roubaix, rolling out the now-familiar line that the choice can be communicated by the group’s media division when it was felt to be finest.
Rather than the flat plains and cobblestones of northern France, in any case, WorldTour biking is at present focussed on the primary incursion of the 2025 peloton into the Pyrenees, on Wednesday within the Volta a Catalunya. It’s an exceptionally arduous 220 kilometres of racing with greater than 5,000 metres of vertical climbing, a lot of it presumably in freezing chilly climate on the upper slopes, and with a mountain high end at La Molina to spherical it off.
That tougher-than-usual format to the La Molina stage – one of many Volta’s most ceaselessly used summit finishes, visited eight instances within the final 11 years – could have its impact on the stage, Matxin argued. Rather than the standard cliché of a primary mountain stage displaying who will lose the race however not who will win it, Matxin stated that with a lot arduous racing in retailer earlier than the ultimate climb, ‘this time round, it is a extra slightly little bit of each.’
Combined with the earlier ascents, together with the Hors Categorie Col de la Creuta, “La Molina is a climb that is tough sufficient to make sure that whoever’s forward is certainly able to go for the victory total, and it will additionally present who’s lower than that GC problem as nicely.”
“Being so arduous beforehand may change the way in which the stage is raced, as nicely. Any climbers who’ve misplaced time already, like Felix Gall (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) or Valentin Paret-Peintre (Soudal-QuickStep), guys who don’t have anything to lose and quite a bit to win – it may develop into a superb alternative for them.”
For the entire peloton, the yr’s first Pyrenean stage of any race is at all times one thing of a voyage at nighttime. Not even Monday’s difficult opening stage of the Volta, which often already gives some hints about who’s in high kind, has solid any early gentle on that early season uncertainty this yr, Matxin argued.
“Monday wasn’t an exceptionally harmful or technical stage, reasonably the truth that we had been on the coast and it rained actually arduous made it a really particular stage, purely due to the climate,” Matxin instructed Cyclingnews – and one from which it was inconceivable to attract any conclusions about who was prone to be going for it within the mountains.
What is definite, in any case, is that Ayuso is in nice kind, having received three of his 4 races thus far this yr, together with Tirreno-Adriatico, Matxin stated. But by all accounts, Yates can also be prepared for an enormous mountain battle.
“Catalunya is an goal, after France and Italy. These are all of the races he’ll be doing earlier than going to altitude and preparing for the Giro d’Italia. Adam was sick in Tirreno, and never at 100%, however he is coming again into it now, and hitting that high kind once more. He’s on his approach, too.”
