Aurélien Canot, Media365, published on Monday 05 May 2025 at 12:22
As expected, the UAE Emirates team will present themselves from the Tour of Italy, this Friday in Albania, without Tadej Pogacar, winner of the last edition. In the absence of his usual number 1, the Emirati training will rely on the Spaniard Juan Ayuso, winner this season of Tirreno-Adriatico, but also on Adam Yates, back on the Giro eight years later.
Despite his brilliant triumph of last year, the question of the presence of Tadej Pogacar for the second year in a row on this Giro that he had discovered last year had not been already arising for a while. Last February, its sports director Mauro Gianetti was very clear about the possibility that his leader defends his title on Italian roads. Unsurprisingly, the 26-year-old Slovenian aliens therefore does not appear among the eight runners chosen by the UAE Emirates team to defend the colors of the training expensive in Pogacar (which will therefore be absent) at the start of this 108th edition of the Tour of Italy, the first of the three big laps on the menu of the year, whose kicks will be given Friday from Albania and the city of Durrës. In the absence of the usual number 1, UAE Emirates will rest its objectives of new coronation on Juan Ayuso (22 years old). Although inexpensive, the young Spanish climber should have with this very mountainous profile of an ideal playground to get off his first big victory, he who finished third from the Vuelta two years ago for his first participation, had failed at the foot of the Podium of the Tour of Spain in 2023 (but had consoled himself with the better young jersey on the shoulders) but never participated in the Giro.
Adam Yates’s comeback
The winner of Tirreno-Adriatico (but also of the Drôme Classic and the Trofeo Laigueglia) this season and who had finished 2nd in the last Tour de Catalonia behind Primoz Roglic, who will once again be the big favorite, will be supported by a big armada. Adam Yates, 4th in the Vuelta in 2021, who had finished on the podium of the Tour de France two years ago and who will find the Giro eight years after his last (and first) participation, Brandon McNulty, who had worn the red jersey of leader during the last edition of the Tour of Spain, Rafal Majka, third of the Vuelta in 2015, the young Mexican hope Isaac del Toro or Jay Vine, who distinguished himself last week by winning a stage in the Tour de Romandie (he finished 3rd in the final classification), all known to be very comfortable at high altitude, are also part of this team which will also align Igor Arieta or Filippo Baroncini.
