UAE Emirates-XRG wonderkid Adrià Pericas takes first professional win at Tour of Portugal

Adrià Pericas won the seventh stage of the Tour of Portugal on Thursday. The 20-year-old Spaniard, in his first season as a professional with WorldTour team UAE Emirates-XRG, had been searching for his maiden victory, and it finally arrived on a punchy finish in Termas do Gerês. Pericas outsprinted Artem Nych and race leader Alexis Guérin to claim his first professional win.

For anyone not yet familiar with Pericas, he is the rider who attracted worldwide attention n 2023 when he managed to stay on the wheel of eventual world champion Mathieu van der Poel on a steep climb while the Dutchman was reconning the World Championship course in Glasgow.

Pericas was just 17 at the time and, even aside from that impressive effort on Van der Poel's wheel, was already regarded as a major talent. He was still racing in Spain for Team Torrent-Tadesan-Purito at the time, but signed with UAE Emirates-XRG for 2025.

Pericas started 2025 with development team UAE Emirates Gen Z, although he was already given several opportunities to race alongside the WorldTour squad. Among his results was a fifth-place finish at the Tour du Rwanda.

At U23 level, he finished sixth in Liège-Bastogne-Liège last year, seventh at the Giro Next Gen and ninth in the U23 road race at the World Championships in Rwanda. UAE had seen enough and handed Pericas a contract through the end of 2030, and promised him a promotion for 2026.

This year, his first official season as a full-time professional, Pericas had already shown glimpses of his class. He finished fourth on the final stage of the Tour of Valencia, second overall at the Tour of Asturias, seventh at the Tour of Hungary and eighth in the elite men's road race at the Spanish national championships.

UAE Emirates-XRG sent him to the Tour of Portugal alongside several strong teammates with the aim of collecting valuable points, and on stage seven Pericas delivered. On the uphill finish, he got the better of the experienced Anicolor / Campicarn duo Alexis Guérin, 34, and Artem Nych, 31, beating both of them in the sprint for the line.

The two Anicolor riders remain first and second in the general classification, while Pericas has now moved into third with three stages remaining. "This is incredible. It was a very hard stage, but I felt really good," the Spaniard said after the finish.

"My teammates did a really good job, so I'm proud to have won this stage," he continued. "I'm very happy and I'm going to enjoy this. It's my first professional victory and I've worked really hard for it."