Stage 3 winner Juan Ayuso(Image credit: Getty Images)
Juan Ayuso of UAE Team Emirates rode in the White Best Young Jersey and posted 25:15 (Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
World Champion Tobias Foss of Jumbo-Visma would finish third on stage 3(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
USA's Matteo Jorgenson of Movistar Team took the hot seat after his ride of 25:20 and finished second(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Adam Yates of UAE Team Emirates opened with fastest time in early kilometres of stage 3 and was two seconds faster than Will Barta(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Will Barta of Movistar Team took the hot seat for a while after his ride in a time of 25:34(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
USA's Matteo Jorgenson of Movistar took the hot seat after his searing ride across the 18.75km individual time trial stage but could not hold off the charge later by Juan Ayuso(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Egan Bernal of Ineos Grenadiers set a time over 26 minutes and was outside the top 20(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Mikkel Bjerg of UAE Team Emirates, the 83rd of 144 riders to cross the finish line, set the fastest time at intermediate sprint and moved into the hot seat(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Ethan Vernon of Soudal-QuickStep rides stage 3 ITT in the Orange Points Jersey(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Prologue winner Josef Cerny of Soudal-QuickStep recorded second-best time among the first 50 riders(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
The first rider on the stage 3 course is Lionel Taminiaux of Team Alpecin-Deceuninck for 18.75km individual time trial(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Elia Viviani of Ineos Grenadiers on the course to Châtel-Saint-Denis(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Chris Froome of Israel-Premier Tech during the ITT(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Obviously the US ITT champion as defined by his bike and matching kit, Lawson Craddock of Team Jayco AlUla finished in the first half of the starters in the top 10(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Remi Cavagna of Soudal-QuickStep on the ITT course was outside the top 15(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Race leader after stage 2, Ethan Hayter of Ineos Grenadiers passes the Swiss scenery on the individual time trial stage at Châtel-Saint-Denis(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Ethan Hayter of Ineos Grenadiers rides the ITT in the Yellow Leader Jersey but would hand it over to stage winner Juan Ayuso(Image credit: Dario Belingheri/Getty Images)
Talented young Spaniard Juan Ayuso has blasted to victory in the Tour de Romandie’s stage 3, an 18.8-kilometre individual time trial, and moved into the overall lead.
Riding his first race since he claimed third overall in the Vuelta a España last year, Ayuso finished five seconds ahead on the rugged TT course of Movistar’s Matteo Jorgenson and 12 seconds up on UAE teammate Adam Yates.
Second in Thursday’s bunch sprint, Ayuso, 20, has now gone one better to claim the first WorldTour win of his career.
Ayuso now leads the six-day Tour de Romandie into the toughest mountain stage on Saturday, with a summit finish at Thyon 2000.
But come what may, for the young Spaniard, the result is a massive morale boost after a difficult first third of the season where a niggling nerve injury in one leg has kept him out of racing for months.
“I am getting better, but the legs are getting worse each day,” Ayuso said afterward, striking a cautious note as he was speaking before knowing he definitively had the fastest time.
“I’m starting to suffer a lot, and I feel like my form is still not there. But I'll be happy if I keep improving every day, even if my sensations are that I’m on the limit.”
“I went out full gas because I knew I had a good time in the intermediate, I was close [to the best], so I knew if I took some risks, I could maybe get the win.”
How it unfolded
Sergio Higuita (Bora-Hansgrohe) was one early non-starter, with Anthony Perez and former Romandie podium finisher Ion Izagirre (both Cofidis) also out of the race after they tested positive for COVID.
Early on Marco Brenner (DSM) clocked the provisional best time of 25:45 on a course where a long, draggy seven-kilometre ascent through the verdant Swiss countryside and a fast, technical drop back down to Chàtel-Saint-Denis comprised the two key challenges.
Brenner’s best result stood for the best part of an hour until former U-23 World Time Trial Champion Mikkel Bjerg (UAE Team Emirates) set the best split time at km 9.4, then followed that up by crossing the line six seconds faster.
Bjerg was not overly happy with the second segment of the course, saying afterwards that “it’s a WorldTour race, everybody will take risks on a downhill like this,” and naming World Time Trial Champion Tobias Foss (Jumbo-Visma) as the big favourite still to finish.
However, gifted American allrounder Will Barta (Movistar), still on the hunt for the first win of his career, squeezed ahead of Bjerg by one second at the mid-stage checkpoint and then claimed the new best provisional time by five seconds.
The big GC favourites were all yet to come, though, and the excellent times clocked by Gino Mader (Bahrain Victorious) and Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) mid-stage had Barta, sitting in the winner’s hot seat, shaking his head in anticipated disappointment. Yates and Mader faded slightly on the descent, though, and instead, it was the American’s compatriot and teammate Matteo Jorgenson who delivered a devastatingly consistent performance, ousting his fellow American from the number one spot with a stunning 13-second advantage at the finish.
Jorgenson successfully fended off challenges by Italian National Champion Matteo Sobrero (Jayco-AIUIa), but there was little he could do to prevent Ayuso from pushing his time down from top place on the leaderboard by five seconds.
Two of the final finishers, Foss and former race leader British National TT Champ Ethan Hayter (Ineos Grenadiers), were not wholly at home on a course where the long early climb left the specialists at something of a disadvantage. Instead, Ayuso clinched the win and moved up from fourth overall - coincidentally, his final placing in the 2022 race - to the leader’s position in the process.
With the time trial positioned mid-way through the race rather than its usual final day slot,
Ayuso now leads Romandie into its crunch 161 kilometres climbing stage on Saturday with an 18-second advantage on Jorgenson and a 19-second advantage over Foss.
It remains to be seen how Ayuso will handle the final mammoth 20.7-kilometre ascent to Thyon 2000, but after defying expectations with this spectacular comeback victory, for the young Spaniard, any success in Romandie from hereon will surely feel like the cherry on top of an already impressively very large cake.
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
