UAE Team Emirates-XRG finish Vuelta a España with seven wins and Almeida second overall

Bringing the curtain down on a great three weeks for the team at La Vuelta a España, João Almeida produced a great ride on stage 20 and ended the race alongside his teammates on Sunday. In doing so, the Portuguese rider claimed second overall in the general classification, marking his best Grand Tour result to date.

The Emirati squad was bested only by Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike, who confirmed his overall victory with a stage win atop Bola del Mundo on the penultimate day. Enjoying the best season of his career to date, Almeida raised his game to consistently challenge the two-time Tour de France champion across all three weeks.

For Almeida, the most memorable moment of La Vuelta was certainly his stage victory on the iconic Alto de l’Angliru, where the 27-year-old got the better of Vingegaard in a day-long battle for supremacy. With his performances in the high mountains, Almeida showed himself as the only contender to Vingegaard, and ensured he would finish as the runner-up in Madrid.

As for the Emirati squad, each and every rider delivered across the three weeks, from the Gran Salida in Turin, to the French Pyrenees, Andorra and finally, Spain. Their efforts delivered seven stage victories for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, the most of any team in a single edition of La Vuelta this century.

There were wins for Jay Vine and Juan Ayuso, who claimed two apiece, the aforementioned Almeida, and their Spanish teammate Marc Soler. Perhaps the sweetest victory of the seven, however, came in the stage 5 team time trial, with Ivo Oliveira, Domen Novak, Felix Großschartner and Mikkel Bjerg proving instrumental to taking the day’s honours.

Along the way, Vine used his two stage wins and several breakaway exploits to rack up points in the King of the Mountains classification, which he wins for the second time in as many years. Both he and Almeida were joined on the Vuelta podium in Madrid by their teammates, with UAE Team Emirates-XRG winning the team classification by over 20 minutes to Visma-Lease a Bike.

Throughout the last week, the whole squad pulled together once more to try and lift Almeida onto the top step of the podium. Although it was not to be, the spirit in which all eight riders attacked stage 20 to Bola del Mundo was commendable.

Almeida finishes La Vuelta a little over a minute down on the race-winning time of Vingegaard, which is the closest that any rider has got to the Dane in his three Grand Tour wins to date. With victories in the Itzulia Basque Country, the Tour de Romandie, and the Tour de Suisse preceding his Vuelta runner-up spot, the 27-year-old looks well set to contest for the biggest honours in the years to come.

Almeida: “We can be proud of our race. We leave the Vuelta with a lot of success and we did what we could. It was a weird Vuelta, because the decisive stages that we expected to decide the race, did not end up being too decisive.

“The day with the most time gaps was in theory, on the easiest climb on stage 9. We just made it really hard and the time gaps were super big, so it shows that it is the riders who make the race hard, not the parcours.

“But I think we can be really proud of the last three weeks, it was a really hard Vuelta.

Vuelta a España final general classification after stage 21

1. Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) 75:53:57

2. João Almeida (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) +1:16

3. Tom Pidcock (Q36.5 Pro Cycling) +3:11