Juan Ayuso joined Tadej Pogačar in the podium area after the stage 10 finish in Le Loiran, having taken the best young rider's white jersey, but accepted that the Slovenian is in a race of his own, as everyone else fights for the podium spots and other jersey competitions.
Pogačar took his third stage victory in this year's race and extended his overall lead to 3:36 on a struggling Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike). Isaac del Toro suffered and was distanced on the final climb after UAE set a scorching pace to chase Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost), to set up Pogačar. That allowed Ayuso to climb to fourth overall at 4:22 and to take the white jersey from the Mexican.
"Tadej is on a different level, and he's doing a different race than us," Ayuso said after the stage in the Massif Central mountains.
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"I'm quite happy how the day went; it was a super hard day. UAE had an amazing day, all of the team was on an exceptional day and rode really hard, so it was a really good tough day.
"I'm happy that me and Skjelly (Mattias Skjelmose) could be in the final, gain some time on some of our rivals and arrive in the podium group. The group that's going to play out the podium arrived together, and it's nice to be back in the jersey."
Paul Seixas is just 13 seconds behind Ayuso in the GC and the best young rider competition, with Del Toro slipping to seventh in the GC and third in the white jersey competition.
Six riders are within 90 seconds in the fight for second and third behind Pogačar. Ayuso knows he is in the fight for the podium.
"I think every day you have to give the best you have because we're seeing that there are five or six riders aiming for two spots on the podium," he said.
"So it's going to be a really, really hard battle to be on the podium in Paris. We just have to focus day by day on ourselves. We did a really good ride today, and I think we were both happy."
Lidl-Trek again had two riders in the select group, just like on stage 6 to Gavarnie-Gèdre in the Pyrenees. Ayuso said he and Skjelmose were simply unable to help with the chase of Pogačar.
"Obviously, I would have loved to cooperate, but I just didn't have the legs," he said.
"In the valley, we were really on the limit when Jonas was going hard. Even before the climb on the valley he was putting us on the limit. I was riding on the wheel at 450, 460 watts. I was doing everything I had to just hold the wheel."
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