João Almeida lost half a minute to top favorite Jonas Vingegaard on Sunday in the Vuelta a España. On the mountain stage to Valdezcaray, the UAE Emirates XRG leader was caught off guard by Vingegaard’s early attack, after which he only received brief support from Jay Vine. "Besides that, I mainly missed my teammates," he said, subtly but sharply criticizing his team.
"We got caught by surprise," was Almeida's first conclusion after crossing the finish line. He meant the surge by Matteo Jorgenson, which launched Vingegaard. Only Giulio Ciccone was able to follow, while the rest had to chase. "We didn’t expect this. I was well positioned, but they went very hard. I couldn’t close the gap because of it. It is what it is... [...] It wasn’t very steep, so I think I might have been able to follow Jonas otherwise. But we will never know."
In the end, Almeida proved to have good legs. Only Tom Pidcock and Felix Gall could follow him in the pursuit of Vingegaard, but the Portuguese rider had little support from those two. "I saw they were at their limit and couldn’t do much," he explained.
What follows is a brief sentence that speaks volumes about the current dynamics within UAE Emirates XRG. "I especially missed my teammates a bit today. Nobody was near me at the end… It is what it is."
