Almeida stays surprisingly kind toward absent Ayuso, Soler, and Vine, explains why he was dropped and what he said to Vingegaard

Almeida has already looked very impressive uphill in this Vuelta, with his stage win on the Angliru on Day 13 as proof. The UAE Team Emirates-XRG leader seemed (and still seems) the main challenger to Vingegaard, who himself doesn’t appear to be in peak form. “He didn’t look super, but neither did I,” Almeida laughed afterward when speaking to media outlets such as Eurosport.

So why did the Portuguese rider briefly lose contact when Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe and Visma | Lease a Bike upped the pace at the base of the final climb, and Jai Hindley attacked? “They were riding pretty hard, and I knew they couldn’t keep that pace, so I decided to ride my own tempo. I knew I’d get back to them,” he said calmly, almost nonchalantly.

“It was pretty steep in the opening phase, so that was tough. Toward the top it got really windy, which meant no one really wanted to ride. It was tricky, and in the end we all finished pretty much together. One guy just has a slightly better sprint than the others,” said Almeida, once again with a big smile. He described the wind, shifting direction constantly through the many hairpins, as “not nice.”

Still, it was striking that on the Alto de El Morredero, Almeida not only cracked briefly but also had no teammates left around him. Jay Vine, Juan Ayuso, and Marc Soler have shown the legs this Vuelta to grab a total of five stage wins and often slip into breakaways, but not to support Almeida? Felix Großschartner managed to save the day on the Angliru, but on Wednesday he didn’t have the legs.

Thus Almeida seems left to fight alone, in what has so far been a rather passive duel with Vingegaard. The Dane, too, hasn’t looked at his very best since his explosive start to the Vuelta. At one point, the two were even sitting at the back of the favorites group, chatting with each other. “I just told him the wind was strong, nothing special,” Almeida said of the exchange.

And how did he feel at the summit? “I’m not really disappointed. I’m tired, just like everyone else. One day less until Madrid.”