João Almeida has bad news for Tadej Pogačar ahead of the Tour de France

We had to wait a while, but João Almeida finally returns to racing on Sunday. The Portuguese rider from UAE Team Emirates-XRG struggled with health problems in the spring, which ruled him out of the Giro d’Italia. He returns in the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, but he is also immediately tearing up the original plan.

Exactly what was wrong with Almeida, he still does not know, but what we do know is that the physical issues are now behind him. “I took a rest period before the Giro and I have been training for about three or four weeks now. The training is going well, I feel good. I have finally recovered, but I do not know exactly what I had. The tests showed some abnormal values, but we never really managed to find the root cause of those changes,” he told O Jogo.

How exactly did that go? “Straight after Catalunya I had to rest to recover from the race and then I gradually started training again. I did not feel too bad, but not great either. And then there is always that pressure to keep training, because the Giro was there. I even did altitude training, but my tests showed no improvement,” he explained.

After that came a period of doing absolutely nothing. “Boring,” Almeida called it. When there was still no improvement, not starting was therefore “very obvious” for him. “I was always realistic and knew that I was not feeling good, so I could not do much about it. I was not prepared, not even for a stage race I think. I would not have been able to achieve much there anyway, it was better to give another team-mate the chance to succeed and get good results, which is also what happened.”

So the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, the new name for the Dauphiné, is the race in which the Portuguese rider returns on Sunday. Ambitions, João? “I do not want to go there with the goal of achieving a certain result, or fighting for victory. I am going there to help my team-mates as well as possible, to see how I feel and to train for the race. We know it is a tough race, with lots of climbs and a very difficult route.”

And that makes it look very much as if the Tour de France can be crossed off, judging by his words. “Personally, I think I would not be ready for a Tour de France. There are still many rough edges I need to smooth out to get to the level required for a Grand Tour, it is a very demanding race.”

According to Almeida, you need to be in top form for the Tour. “Because otherwise you cannot achieve much. And I clearly do not think I will reach that level. I think the best option is to keep training.” Tadej Pogacar therefore seems likely to lose an important helper ahead of the Tour.

Still on the schedule: the Vuelta a España. “Without a doubt,” the Portuguese rider even confirmed. “As far as I know, my calendar for the second half of the season remains the same for now. That is the Clásica San Sebastián, the Vuelta a Burgos and the Vuelta a España. I do not know whether I will race anything else on top of that. And of course I will also do the World Championships,” Almeida concluded.