Another contender for Tour de France victory? João Almeida on fire during training ride and takes KOM from Juan Ayuso

UAE Team Emirates - XRG depth and strength is apparent all-year long, and this was the case once again during the Giro d'Italia where they had two contenders for the overall victory. The same may happen at the Tour de France, as Tadej Pogacar will team up with a João Almeida who is putting fear into rivals with his training numbers.

Almeida was given a leadership role in several races during the spring and rode to a second place at both the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana and Volta ao Algarve; beat Jonas Vingegaard to victory in a summit finish at Paris-Nice...

But later on in the spring he really kicked off his campaign, winning two stages and the overall classification at Itzulia Basque Country, an impressive dominating performance where he was almost unrivalled. He would conclude his spring campaign by also winning the Tour de Romandie.

Almeida, like Tadej Pogacar and the team's Tour de France block, has been training at altitude in Sierra Nevada - only he will race the Tour de Suisse unlike Pogacar, where he should be the main favourite for the overall classification.

He certainly will enter that status after an impressive KOM that has caught the attention of fans. On the Alto del Purche, in the Granada area, Almeida beat the previous KOM of Juan Ayuso (of 13:22 minutes) by a whole 32 seconds, bringing down the record time to 12:50 now. The Top10 is packed with some of the world's top climbers, who have both set these times in training rides and racing scenarios.

The segment, which is over 6 kilometers long at 9% average gradient, was climbed at an average speed of 20.6Km/h by the Portuguese rider who besides being a very consistent rider and excellent time-trialist, is also consistently evolving as a strong climber.