{"id":33956,"date":"2025-07-30T17:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/33956\/"},"modified":"2025-07-30T17:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-30T17:41:07","slug":"im-convinced-joao-almeida-would-have-made-the-podium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/33956\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019m convinced Jo\u00e3o Almeida would have made the podium"},"content":{"rendered":"

Admittedly, these are small disappointments when a team achieves its main goal of winning the Tour de France, but they are still disappointments. For Almeida meanwhile, he gets a chance to go for glory himself at the upcoming Vuelta a Espana<\/a>, as he leads the UAE team alongside Juan Ayuso<\/a> in Pogacar’s absence.<\/p>\n

As mentioned, Pogacar is settling for just one Grand Tour in 2025. Matxin explains how the three-week races really take it out of a rider like the world champion, and how the time simply isn’t right to return to the Vuelta a Espana later this season.<\/p>\n

“Everything has its time. Last year, right after the Tour, everyone was saying he had to go to the Vuelta and chase history by winning all three Grand Tours in a single season. Then he won the World Championships, and no one remembered that Vuelta talk anymore,” Matxin explains. “After he did a recon of Paris\u2013Roubaix, people started demanding he ride that. Everyone talks about history, but in the same breath, it\u2019s all so fleeting \u2014 and often contradictory. That\u2019s why our planning is so thorough.”<\/p>\n

And despite seemingly having Pogacar to lead the team for at least the foreseeable future, Matxin insists that there will be opportunities for other riders in future. “I don\u2019t want to put pressure on anyone, but I\u2019ll talk about those within our own ranks. Isaac del Toro<\/a>, Juan Ayuso\u2026 young riders with the capacity to take on major roles,” he concludes. “Nobody outside Mexico picked Del Toro as a favourite for the Giro, but he showed the engine he has.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Admittedly, these are small disappointments when a team achieves its main goal of winning the Tour de France,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-33956","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\/33956","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=33956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}