UAE Team Emirates has signed 17-year-old Spanish junior champion Juan Ayuso to a five-year contract. The Alicante native is in his final season as a junior rider and will ride for a development team in the first year of his contract in 2021 before stepping up to full-time WorldTour racing.

"It's a gradual transition for him to a WorldTour team," said Alicante. We haven't decided where he'll best spend his first year, whether it will be at the continental or professional level."

"He attended the team's training camp last winter and raced this year on a bike provided by the team. Last year he had a very strong season as a junior and he showed that at the start of this year."

Ayuso had been on the radar of UAE Team Emirates since midway through last season, until the race was suspended in March due to the COVID-19 epidemic, and 2020 Already with six wins to his name, the 17-year-old is a strong climber, but in 2019 he showed his versatility by finishing third in the junior time trial at the Spanish Championships.

"For now I am an all-rounder, but I think I will be a climber in the future," Ayuso said in a statement released by the team. His first contact with the team came from Matosin in the middle of last season, and then he got to know the team a little more during training camp last winter."

He added, "I've been working with the team for a few years now, and I've been working with them for a few years now.

"In training camp, I had the opportunity to see how the team actually worked. In training camp we had the opportunity to see how the team actually worked. I chose the UAE over any other team because the mentality of the team was very similar to mine.

UAE Team Emirates has focused on attracting young talent over the past few seasons, and the 2020 roster includes six riders under the age of 22: Tadej Pogacar, Brandon McNulty, Mikel Bjarg, Camilo Ardila, Alessandro Covi and Jasper Philipsen.

Ayuso's addition is in line with a recruitment policy that appears to be increasingly geared toward long-term goals, even if Pogacar could make his Tour de France debut this year if the race goes ahead, with a podium finish at the Vuelta a España in his debut season in 2019.

"It's about giving him time and space to grow as a rider and as a person," Joxen Maxine Fernandez said of Ayuso. For now, our priority is for him to enjoy the bike. He is part of a long-term project we are building at UAE Team Emirates."