For a rider who had just lost any chance of winning his home Grand Tour, Juan Ayuso seemed anything but troubled when talking to reporters after the Vuelta a España's first major summit finish at Andorra.
In barely six kilometres of the first-category ascent to Pal, and just a day after UAE Team Emirates-XRG had scored a notable triumph in the team time trial at Figueres, the 22-year-old Spaniard lost nearly seven minutes to lead favourite Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike).
In one fell swoop, and on the first major mountain stage of the Vuelta, such a massive time loss cast a huge, definitive hole in any kind of aspirations Ayuso may have had at trying to repeat his breakthrough Vuelta podium finish of three years ago. It also destroyed any chance of sporting revenge for his abandon of the Giro d'Italia, his main GC target of the year earlier this May.
But after taking only a little time to have a recovery drink and don a rain jacket as upward to two dozen journalists massed around him, Ayuso's readiness to then explain what had happened strongly suggested that this setback was anything but a surprise.
"I've been saying it since the start and even before, my aim was not to go for the overall, the team asked me to test myself to see if I got better [during the race]. So out of respect, I tried it and as I wasn't feeling good, I dropped back," Ayuso explained.
Pre-Turin, the Spaniard had certainly pointed out that his late call-up for the Vuelta following Tadej Pogačar's decision to pull out, coupled with a lack of specific preparation, had made racing his second Grand Tour of the year - also for the first time in his career - a voyage into the unknown.
However, his comments following the TTT win on Wednesday that "the situation right now on GC is perfect, Thursday is when the Vuelta really starts and we will see whether go for stages or the overall" had still left the door open to a potential overall bid.
Less than 24 hours later, though, when he plummeted from second place, just eight seconds behind Vingegaard overall to 43rd at 10:13 on new leader Torstein Træen (Bahrain - Victorious) in the space of just six kilometres, that GC door slammed resoundingly shut.
"I didn't have the weight of the GC [expectations] hanging over me, it was hanging over you," Ayuso said after stage 6, referring to the widespread idea amongst the media and fans that he and teammate João Almeida jointly constituted Vingegaard's biggest threat.
Comments by both UAE riders and management earlier this week that "two [GC] cards is better than one" had also done nothing to discourage that idea that Ayuso and Almeida were co-GC leaders of course. But the fact that that no teammates dropped back to help him on the Pal climb, strongly suggested UAE could well have been expecting this setback, too.
"I knew from the start how I was, and what I was going for, it's normal to create expectations and people expected me to do the overall as I have always done," Ayuso said, pausing only in his explanations to receive a consolatory hug from Team Manager Joxean Fernández Matxin.
"But this isn't the Giro d'Italia, it's not such a huge blow as that [abandon and GC defeat] was. Here, it was a question of doing what I could and then dropping back when I couldn't go any further."
Ayuso's exit from the UAE GC plan, combined with Almeida's strong comeback on Pal after the Portuguese racer was briefly dropped by Ciccone and Vingegaard, certainly will end all the speculation about whether he or his Almeida is the UAE Vuelta leader. But as stage winner Jay Vine himself confirmed in his press conference, Ayuso's tough day was a disappointment nonetheless.
"Juan losing time is not what you want," Vine said. "At the start of the day, we had three guys in the top five, but João is incredibly strong.
"He's shown all year that he can win bike races, just as much as the best of us, so he's in incredible shape, and we will try and fight as much as possible for the red jersey, and hopefully end with it in Madrid."
As for Ayuso, having to ask reporters to tell him who had won the stage and what had happened to Almeida in the final kilometres showed just how quickly he had fallen out of the GC picture. But following the stage 6 setback, keeping tabs on Almeida's performance will likely loom very large in his Vuelta plan, as Ayuso will presumably have to combine a team role with his own longer-term plans of using the Vuelta to build for the upcoming UCI Road World Championships.
"Firstly I want to see how the team has gone, from what you [the media] tell me João is in good shape and that's the key thing," Ayuso concluded before heading for the team bus parked a kilometre below the finish. "And then after that, if I can, I'll try and get a stage."
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