João Almeida raring to go for Tour de Romandie debut

With the Ardennes Classics coming to a close, attention will soon turn to the stage racing and Grand Tour season in earnest. Next up for UAE Team Emirates-XRG will be the Tour de Romandie in Switzerland, with João Almeida ready to make his debut after winning Itzulia Basque Country earlier this month.

Beginning on Tuesday, 29 April, the 78th edition of the Tour de Romandie will include two time trials, three hilly stages and one epic mountaintop finish at altitude. It is a race in which UAE Team Emirates-XRG have enjoyed some great moments over recent years, with Adam Yates winning the race in 2023 and the Emirati squad finishing inside the top five overall on four occasions through Rui Costa and Juan Ayuso.

Last season, Brandon McNulty won a memorable stage to Oron, and a year earlier, both Ayuso and Yates came away from Switzerland with stage success. On his way to the overall victory, Yates won the summit finish atop Thyon 2000, and the race will return to the mountain this time around.

Stage 4 of this year’s Tour de Romandie will task the peloton with over 4,000m of climbing in just 117.8km, making the day from Sion to Thyon 2000 the undisputed Queen stage. Stages 2 through 4 pose a trio of hilly tests that will no doubt see the general classification contenders do battle, with the race bookended by two individual time trials.

First up will be the prologue around Saint-Imier on Tuesday, standing at just 3.5km in length, before a 17km ITT will round out the race on Sunday afternoon. Owing to the two tests against the clock, the winner of the Tour de Romandie is often a strong time trialist, and the list of contenders at this year’s edition promises another exciting watch.

For UAE Team Emirates-XRG, the Portuguese Almeida is looking forward to continuing his fine season to date.

Almeida: “The Tour de Romandie is always a tough race, with unpredictable weather and really challenging climbs. I feel good about my form right now, and the team is motivated.

“We’ll take it day by day and look for opportunities — hopefully we can fight for a strong result. The win in Itzulia was amazing and I have a good feeling for the rest of the season as we get closer to the Tour de France.”

The 26-year-old will be joined in Switzerland by a collection of riders who have all shown great form in recent months. The full UAE Team Emirates-XRG squad is as follows:
– João Almeida (Por)
– Jan Christen (Swi)
– Felix Großschartner (AUT)
– Rune Herregodts (Bel)
– Ivo Oliveira (Por)
– Pablo Torres (Spa)
– Jay Vine (Aus)

In Rune Herregodts, Ivo Oliveira and Pablo Torres, the Emirati squad has a trio of riders who each impressed at last week’s Giro d’Abruzzo. For Oliveira, it was a career week, with the Portuguese taking two stage wins in the most exhilarating of fashion. His teammate Herregodts was instrumental to the team’s success, whilst Torres produced his best performance in a UAE Team Emirates-XRG jersey to date in taking third overall.

A few weeks earlier in Italy, it was their teammate Jay Vine who stole the show at Coppi e Bartali, with the Australian taking a pair of stage victories in dominant fashion. The Tour de Romandie will be his first outing in a month.

Meanwhile, in Felix Großschartner and Jan Christen, UAE Team Emirates-XRG can count on two riders who were pivotal to Tadej Pogačar’s impressive victory at La Flèche Wallonne in the midweek. For Christen, the one-day Classic marked his return to racing from injuries sustained at the Faun-Ardèche Classic in early March.

The Swiss youngster set up Pogačar’s winning attack before riding to an impressive 13th place in his own right. Next week will see the 20-year-old Christen make his third appearance at Switzerland’s first WorldTour stage race of the season.