{"id":102669,"date":"2025-08-30T07:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T07:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/102669\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T07:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T07:24:07","slug":"juan-ayuso-bounces-back-to-claim-first-vuelta-stage-win-as-traeen-stays-in-red-vuelta-a-espana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/102669\/","title":{"rendered":"Juan Ayuso bounces back to claim first Vuelta stage win as Tr\u00e6en stays in red | Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Spaniard Juan Ayuso showed a remarkable recovery after his collapse in the Pyrenees only 24 hours previously to go it alone on the climb to the finish and triumph in stage seven of the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Torstein Tr\u00e6en retains the red jersey, holding a 2min 33sec lead over Jonas Vingegaard<\/a>, who moved from fifth to second in the standings but without closing the gap to the Norwegian.<\/p>\n

Ayuso, tipped to be one of the main challengers to Vingegaard, the pre-race favourite, had slipped way down the general classification after being dropped on the final climb on Thursday, but was back to his best on the 188km ride from Andorra la Vella to Cerler. The Italian Marco Frigo crossed the line more than one minute behind Ayuso in second, with another Spaniard, Ra\u00fal Garc\u00eda Pierna, third.<\/p>\n

Ayuso broke away early in the stage before he was joined by a group of 11 riders, including his Australian UAE Team Emirates-XRG teammate Jay Vine<\/a>, who grabbed more points to tighten his grip at the top of the King of the Mountains standings. Ayuso made his telling move 11km from the finish.<\/p>\n

The 22-year-old, who finished third overall in 2022 and fourth the following year, was just eight seconds behind the then leader, Vingegaard, in second place before Thursday\u2019s downfall. While Ayuso is still almost seven and a half minutes off the red jersey, he has managed to win his first individual Vuelta stage, following up the team time trial victory on stage five.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s amazing to win a stage in the Vuelta, which is my favourite race,\u201d Ayuso said. \u201cThe way I won the race, I will remember always. I\u2019m super-proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vingegaard had managed to get away from Tr\u00e6en in the final kilometres, but the Bahrain Victorious cyclist fought back. \u201cIt was a decent day,\u201d the Dane said. \u201cIt was not an easy day and we wanted to try to save our energy a bit, so we decided not to do anything today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s stage eight will be a flat 163.5km ride from Monz\u00f3n Templario to Zaragoza.<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, there was positive news regarding the condition of Chris Froome, with Israel-Premier Tech posting that the British cyclist was in \u201cgood spirits\u201d after successful surgery following a crash in the south of France<\/a> that left him with a fractured vertebrae, collapsed lung and five broken ribs.<\/p>\n

Froome, 40, crashed while on a training ride on Wednesday and was airlifted to hospital in Toulon, about 100 miles from his home in Monaco.<\/p>\n

Chris Froome has had surgery after a serious crash on Wednesday. Photograph: Martin Rickett\/PA<\/p>\n

A statement from Israel-Premier Tech said: \u201cChris has successfully undergone surgery after his recent injuries. The procedures went as planned, and Chris is currently recovering in hospital under the care of his medical team. He is in good spirits and grateful for the excellent medical support he has received. Chris and his family would like to thank fans, friends, and the cycling community for their concern and kind messages during this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n

The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n

Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n

Froome\u2019s injuries will end his season and could mean the end of one of the most successful Grand Tour careers in cycling\u2019s history, with the four-time Tour de France champion in the final months of the five-year contract he signed when he left Ineos Grenadiers to join Israel Premier-Tech before the 2021 campaign.<\/p>\n

Froome also won the Giro d\u2019Italia in 2018 and the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a in both 2011 and 2017 \u2013 all with Team Sky. Only four men have more Tour de France titles, with Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indur\u00e1in all five-time winners. Only Merckx, Anquetil and Hinault have more than Froome\u2019s seven Grand Tour titles, which leave him tied with Indur\u00e1in, Alberto Contador and Fausto Coppi.<\/p>\n

However, Froome has never recovered his best form since a serious crash during the 2019 Crit\u00e9rium du Dauphin\u00e9, which left him in intensive care with a fractured femur, elbow, ribs and pelvis.<\/p>\n

The last of his 46 professional career wins came at the 2018 Giro and his best result since that 2019 crash was third place on stage 12 of the 2022 Tour de France to Alpe d\u2019Huez as Tom Pidcock took victory.<\/p>\n

Froome broke his collarbone at the UAE Tour in February and had previously hinted that 2025 could be his final year of competitive racing. He last raced at the Tour of Poland this month, finishing 68th overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spaniard Juan Ayuso showed a remarkable recovery after his collapse in the Pyrenees only 24 hours previously…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-102669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}