DISCUSSION Vuelta a España Stage 18 | Is Joao Almeida the favourite to win the Vuelta now?

The eighteenth stage of the Vuelta a España featured the only individual time trial of this edition. Initially planned to be 27km long, it had to be cut to just 12km in order to ensure the safety of riders, which could have been put in danger by the pro-Palestine protests.

The route was essentially flat, which favoured the TT specialists and allowed them to unleash all their power. Daan Hoole and Ethan Vernon set strong times early in the day, but it was Filippo Ganna who smashed the clock and set an outstanding best time.

The Italian champion crossed the line in just 13 minutes, with a mind blowing average speed of 56.244km/h, and he sat in the hot seat until the end of the day. Time trial specialists that started later than him managed to stay close to his time during the two intermediate points, but they always succumbed in the final part of the route.

Mads Pedersen, Rémi Cavagna, Bruno Armirail or Stefan Küng could not get even close to Ganna’s record, and it was Jay Vine the only man threatening his best time. The Australian demonstrated he is in excellent shape and is not only a climber, falling short to beat Ganna by less than 1 second and sliding into a provisional second place.

It was the turn of the GC men afterwards, with Pidcock, Hindley, Gall and Riccitello all getting a very similar result. Pidcock was surprisingly the best of them, gaining 3 seconds on Hindley and reinforcing his podium bid. Pellizzari lost a chunk of time and his lead with Riccitello, against whom he is fighting for the white jersey, was reduced to less than one minute.

Joao Almeida and Jonas Vingegaard were one step above the other GC contenders, both finishing in the top 10. However, it was the Portuguese who proved to be stronger and finished 10 seconds faster than Vingegaard, closing the gap in the GC to just 40 seconds and keeping his hopes to win the Vuelta alive.

Once the stage finished, we asked some of our writers to share their thoughts and main takeaways about what happened today.

Ganna faced what was hardly a real time trial—more an extended prologue. Midway through Küng’s ride he had to hold his breath, as the Swiss was on schedule to beat his time. Ganna’s final four kilometres were otherworldly, and he relaxed only after seeing Küng ride the last section fifteen seconds slower.

At that point even Oliveira sat between the two stars—the Portuguese was the surprise of the day. The second part began with the GC contenders, who have all dug very deep in this Vuelta. Ganna, by contrast, could focus entirely on this one effort, and under normal circumstances no one should have touched his time. Yet, others came close.

Armirail arrived first, eager to underline his move to Visma, and posted a strong mark as he flew past Ciccone. Almeida, Vingegaard, and Jay Vine were still to come; put this test at the start of the Vuelta and, over a full course of about thirty kilometres, Almeida probably takes half a minute from Vingegaard—same for Jay Vine.

In the end Ganna the specialist won the time trial, Almeida gained ten seconds on Vingegaard, and Ivo Oliveira was rider of the day for me. All told, the shortened time trial was a damp squib for organizers, fans, and riders alike. Too short to label it as a true TT.

It's a shame that the time trial couldn't be completed in its entirety, but anyway, let's focus on the sporting side of things. And we'll start with Filippo Ganna, who has lived up to his status as the big favorite.

However, Jay Vine came close to causing an upset, finishing just one second behind the Italian. The UAE rider loves La Vuelta, as shown by his two victories in 2022 and two more in this edition in 2025.

As for the overall battle, João Almeida seems to be taking the lead over Jonas Vingegaard. Perhaps the Bola del Mundo is not enough, but the Portuguese rider is now 40 seconds behind the Dane with three stages to go. It is well known that a time trial in the last week dictates a lot about the form of each rider.

And the fact that Almeida has been able to gain 10 seconds on Vingegaard shows that he is in spectacular form. Therefore, it leaves us with a big question mark ahead of the Bola del Mundo and whether he can overtake him there and pass him in the overall classification to win his first Grand Tour.

UAE keep dominating the race, today they had three riders in the top 5, with a very strong and for me unexpected performance from Ivo Oliveira, who outperformed top specialists.

Filippo Ganna had been completely invisible throughout the race, but he knew his time to shine was today. The Italian TT champion couldn’t stand out during the previous 17 stages, which is very unconventional from him. He is usually very active either getting into breaks or sprinting, but so far he hadn’t done any, which raised many questions about his shape and whether he would be able to perform at his best.

Today he cleared all doubts and showed that, even if not in top shape, he is one of the best pure time trialists in the world. He averaged 62.669km/h in the last 4.2km of the stage…

Jonas Vingegaard and Joao Almeida were expected to do a very similar time trial, with the odds of who would do it better leaning a bit towards the Dane. The result was the opposite, and I think Almeida recovering 10 seconds was one of the best outcomes he could have imagined.

A time trial in the third week of a Grand Tour exposes the true form of the riders, so the results are excellent news for Almeida. It shows that Vingegaard is far from his best shape and struggling more than usual, which should be a huge boost of morale for Almeida to convince himself that beating the overwhelming favorite is actually possible.

Still, recovering 40 seconds to Vingegaard is obviously not an easy task. He is still a champion and he finished in ninth today, but Almeida’s chances are much higher than what most of us would have expected one week ago. He will need to attack from far on Saturday and the help of every single one of his teammates. Will UAE be up to the job?