Almeida also left wondering how close he could’ve gotten to Vingegaard in the original Vuelta time trial

“I think I did what I could, even though this type of effort doesn’t suit me that well,” Almeida said, with a sense of understatement. After all, he finished third, just 8 seconds behind specialist and stage winner Filippo Ganna and 7 seconds behind his always strong time-trialing teammate Jay Vine, who missed out on the win by just one second.

For Almeida, what mattered more was what he gained compared to the riders behind him. Against Vingegaard, it was already 10 seconds, narrowing the gap between the two to 40 seconds, still in favor of the Dane from Visma | Lease a Bike. “It’s a pity it wasn’t 27.2 kilometers, but it is what it is,” Almeida said with a pained smile on Eurosport.

So what if it had been the full 27.2 kilometers? What if this trend had continued and Almeida had taken not just 10, but perhaps 20 or 30 seconds off his 50-second deficit? “We’ll never know. Life isn’t built on ‘what ifs,’ so you can’t think too much about that.”

“We can still be satisfied with the result, because I felt strong,” Almeida said, trying to focus on the positives. After losing 2 seconds to Vingegaard on an uphill finish in stage 17 on Wednesday, it was the other way around this time. “It’s the same for everyone. As a cyclist, you have to be prepared for any scenario. So it’s fine, we’re still very much in the game.”

Three days of Vuelta remain, but everyone knows that only one major day is left for the GC riders. On Saturday, an insane mountain stage awaits, finishing atop the brutally steep Bola del Mundo. Almeida could definitely make up 40 seconds on Vingegaard there, but he’s not putting too much pressure on it himself.

“I’ll go into it the same way as I did on day one of the Vuelta. Every day, we do the best we can,” he said calmly. Almeida also knows that anything can happen, from pro-Palestine protests to bad legs. “Sometimes you have good days, sometimes bad ones. That’s the same for everyone. We have to stay focused and give everything, that’s all we can do. Control what you can control.”