Should Tadej Pogačar head into Paris next Sunday wearing yellow, you’d have to have been living under a rock not to be aware that he’ll be equalling the record of five Tour de France wins. But what is far less well-known is that a different Tour record will actually be broken.
According to cycling writer ammattipyöräily, Movistar racer Nelson Oliveira is currently on equal footing with former Mont Ventoux winner Sylvester Szmyd’s record of 23 Grand Tours, and assuming disaster doesn’t strike in the last 96 hours of this year’s race, the 37-year-old will move onto 24 next Sunday in Paris.
With 484 stages across those 24 GTs completed on Sunday in Paris, Oliveira will also have made it safely home in 10 Tours, four Giros and 10 Vueltas.
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A pro since 2010 in the long-defunct Xacobeo-Galicia Continental squad, Oliveira raced his first Grand Tour at the Vuelta a España way back in 2011 for RadioShack, finishing in 117th. With his role as a domestique long established, he’s completed two Grand Tours in eight different years, for the first time in 2015, then again from 2019 through to 2024 and again in 2026.
Under contract with Movistar until 2027, Oliveira has no intention of stopping racing for now. “Until my head tells me otherwise,” he tells Cyclingnews, “I’m sticking around.”
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As for the record, “The best strategy is to take it day by day and not to think too much. If we get there to Paris, we’ll see how we handle it.
“I get a lot of interviews about the record, but really I just want to live through this day by day. When we get to Paris, we’ll talk about it more, but honestly I’m just focussed on today’s stage – no more, no less.”
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It fits Oliveira’s belief in not overthinking things, that he’d never even heard of the record until the Giro d’Italia this year. But when he looks back at what he’s managed to achieve, he’s more than satisfied with making it as far as he could.
“When I was back racing my first Vuelta in 2011, I never imagined I’d get to 24, and when I was a kid riding around Portugal, I never thought I’d even get to do one. So it’s really rewarding that I’ve made it as far as here.”
“I’m braking a bit more, that’s true, as I’m getting older, because I’ve got a head on my shoulders and I’m a human being and the peloton is going faster and faster. But we’re not just in the Tour riding around and thinking this is great. We’re lacking a victory, and we’re here to try and win one as well.”
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Part of four breakaways to date in the Tour – Movistar’s sole goal after their leader Cian Uijtdebroeks had to abandon, ill – Oliveira has only ever taken one Grand Tour stage win, back in Tarazona in the Vuelta a España 2015.
“It was a transition stage, there was a very big group, and there was a bit of a climb about 30km from the finish. Then I put my head down and time trialled it” – something which, as three-time Portuguese TT champion, Oliveira knows a fair bit – “all the way to the finish. That’s a day I’m never going to forget, for sure.”
The lone Portuguese racer in this year’s Tour, Oliveira says that even without a big name in the race, back home it still has a big following.
“It’s a shame there’s no João Almeida” – normally part of the UAE Team Emirates-XRG Tour lineup but unable to ride because of a lengthy illness and uneven condition – “but people like cycling and that’s what really matters.”
After Sunday’s celebrations, assuming all goes well for Oliveira in the last four days of the Tour, there won’t be a third Grand Tour this August.
Next on the list, he says, is the Tour of Germany and the Hamburg Cyclassic, the two Canadian WorldTour races and the Road World Championships. But his unique achievement in the Tour de France won’t be forgotten, either, and the hopes of a breakaway victory for Movistar remain, too.
“There are teams that want to win the stages and don’t let the breaks get away,” Oliveira says. “But we’re motivated.”
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