{"id":307515,"date":"2025-12-09T19:59:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T19:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/307515\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T19:59:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T19:59:13","slug":"portuguese-star-joao-almeida-likely-set-for-home-start-in-opening-races-of-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/307515\/","title":{"rendered":"Portuguese star Jo\u00e3o Almeida likely set for home start in opening races of 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

This weekend brings one of the most keenly awaited moments of the offseason when Tadej Poga\u010dar <\/a>unveils his full upcoming race program at the UAE Team Emirates-XRG media day, but in the meantime, another top teammate, Jo\u00e3o Almeida, <\/a>has revealed what will likely be the first two races on his calendar.<\/p>\n

Talking at the Velo d’Or celebration last weekend, where Poga\u010dar received the award as best male rider of 2026<\/a>, Almeida said he’ll most likely be kicking off his season at the Figueira Champions Classic on February 14, followed by the Volta ao Algarve<\/a>, running from February 18-22.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While both races have an obvious draw for a home rider like Almeida, the 27-year-old has something of a score to settle in the Volta ao Algarve, as he finished second in 2025 after a tough struggle against Jonas Vingegaard (<\/a>Visma-Lease a Bike). His runner-up spot was also the first podium finish for a Portuguese rider in the country’s highest-ranked stage race in the UCI calendar since Jo\u00e3o Rodrigues won outright in 2021,<\/a> and just the second top-three finish for Portugal in the Algarve in a decade.<\/p>\n

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Almeida then went from strength to strength throughout a landmark 2025. He claimed overall WorldTour victories in Itzulia Basque Country, Tour de Suisse, and the Tour de Romandie, as well as a second place overall – his best result to date in a Grand Tour – in the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a and beating Vingegaard into second place on its hardest summit finish at the Angliru.<\/p>\n

He suffered one major setback after crashing badly in the opening week of the Tour de France and then abandoning<\/a>. However, globally, 2025 was the 27-year-old’s most successful season to date by far.<\/p>\n

Almeida said at the Velo d’Or ceremony he had had no such issues so far in the off-season and was looking forward to getting to grips with his 2026 season, which would – if the program is confirmed – mean starting two weeks later than in 2025, when he began racing at the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana in early February.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, we’re still in the preliminary phase, but it already counts as a season for us, it’s going well: no bad luck, no getting sick, no falls. So everything is going wonderfully,” Almeida said in a statement reported by Ciclismoatual.<\/a><\/p>\n

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This week, UAE Team Emirates-XRG will begin their first full pre-season training camp in Benidorm in southern Spain, and on Saturday, all of the team’s top riders will reveal their main race program for 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This weekend brings one of the most keenly awaited moments of the offseason when Tadej Poga\u010dar unveils his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-307515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307515\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}