“I’m very happy, the goal was to win the race. Unfortunately, I didn’t win any stage, but I was always in front. I’m very happy with the victory, we can be proud of [the team’s] performance,” he said, shortly after climbing onto the podium.

Almeida completed the 17.1 kilometres in Geneva in 20.45 minutes, losing only to Belgian Remco Evenepoel (Soudal QuickStep), the Olympic champion in the specialty, who was the winner in 20.33.

In third place, 18 seconds behind, was the Italian Alberto Bettiol (Astana), out of the running in the overall standings, where the Portuguese finished with a 26-second advantage over the Frenchman Lenny Martinez (Bahrain-Victorious) and 41 seconds over the Australian Jay Vine, his teammate.

Almeida became the clear favourite in the ‘time trial’ after a week in which he failed to win any stage but managed to climb positions in the overall standings whenever the road got tougher, practically guaranteeing his triumph with second place on Saturday, in the tough climb to Thyon 2000.

“It was the right day. To be honest, I struggled a bit all week, I didn’t feel 100%. But I gave it my all and didn’t give up. Sometimes it’s all about the mindset. I was very confident in my time trial, I knew that having good legs would give me the advantage,” he said.

“Important”

Winning this race “is very important”, he admitted, and sealed a feat that, in recent years, has only been within the reach of the three ‘sharks’ of world cycling, his teammate Tadej Pogacar, Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic, which is to win two consecutive WorldTour stage races.

“I have always done my best, but sometimes I am not so lucky, other times another rider is stronger. I have been second many times, but [this year] I have been lucky and healthy,” he said.

After health problems took away several opportunities, such as the Giro d'Italia in which Covid-19 kept him from the podium this year, and pushed by the “massive Portuguese community” in Switzerland, he celebrated a new victory, before the holidays and returning, for the Giro d'Italia, on the way to the Tour.

After winning the Tour of the Basque Country in April, the 26-year-old Portuguese cyclist, from A-dos-Francos (Caldas da Rainha), won a second WorldTour race in a row, in a 2025 season in which he won two stages in the Basque race and, before that, one of the stages of Paris-Nice.

This triumph, the 18th of his professional career, joins this year's ‘Itzulia’ and the Tour of Luxembourg and the Tour of Poland, both in 2021, as stage race victories – for João Almeida, it follows the Tour of Switzerland, in June, in which he was second in 2024, before the Tour de France.

These two consecutive victories also leave him as champion of two of the seven main stage races on the world cycling calendar, which include, in addition to the Tours of France, Italy and Spain, also the Paris-Nice, the Tirreno-Adriatico, the Tour of Catalonia, the Criterion du Dauphiné and the Tour of Switzerland, the latter being the Portuguese rider's next objective.

It is the best phase of the career of the young man who showed himself to the world by leading the Giro d'Italia for 15 days in 2020, who won the Tour of Poland and the Tour of Luxembourg in 2021, who did not have a reputation as an attacking cyclist and who this year showed another side, to add triumphs to a stage in the 2023 Giro d'Italia and two in the Tour of Switzerland last year.

This year, the third-place finisher in the Giro2023 had already been second overall in the Volta ao Algarve, behind two-time Tour champion (2022 and 2023) Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike), and in the Volta à Comunitat Valenciana.