Almeida three quarters of an hour down after five stages: 'My form is just not good'

Things are not going well for João Almeida. The Portuguese rider returned to racing at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes — a race he would ordinarily be capable of winning — but the UAE Team Emirates-XRG rider is making no impression whatsoever. Even in stage 4, a day widely expected to suit the fast men, he lost significant time.

The breakaway held on to beat the sprinters in stage 4, but behind them Wout van Aert won the peloton sprint from Bryan Coquard and Phil Bauhaus. And more than five minutes further back, Almeida crossed the line in 139th place out of 144. That leaves him ahead of only Coquard, Valentin Ferron and the badly crashed Sam Watson in the overall standings.

UAE Team Emirates-XRG finished ninth in that test, one minute and one second behind winners Visma | Lease a Bike. Almeida did his work for team leader Isaac del Toro and was dropped when del Toro still had Kevin Vermaerke and Pavel Sivakov alongside him. Progress of a sort — but Almeida had little expectation of a good day ahead of stage 4. "Hopefully it will be nice and sunny, then it will be a little easier."

The Portuguese rider missed the Giro d'Italia due to a virus, and he struggled for a long time afterward. “We mainly saw abnormal results in my blood tests. That’s it; I don’t need to say much more about it. I tried to keep training to see how it went. But I had to stop. It is what it is.” Now the 27-year-old climber is back, but not quite back to his best yet.

But it’s still hard to wipe the smile off his face. "I feel good, but I'm not in shape," he explains. "I just need to train, prepare better. I haven't been prepared enough. But I feel like I'm recovering well every day, which is a good sign. I'm looking forward to the future, with big goals." By that, he’s referring to the Vuelta a España. There’s still work to be done, but will he start there? “I think so.”

The Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes concludes with three grueling mountain stages, but don’t expect Almeida to act as Del Toro’s lead-out man there. 'You don’t get into shape in a few days; it takes months of preparation. Hopefully I’ll feel better every day and make some progress, but those final days are very tough and demand a lot. I’ll see what I can do to support Torito.'

Author: David Bavin-Hobbs - [email protected]