"I think we were perfect today" - João Almeida and UAE Team Emirates take on Valenciana race lead

Mathias Vacek started the day in the lead of the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana but a crash early in the day made it impossible for the Lidl-Trek rider to defend himself. In the second mountain stage of the race, João Almeida found himself in the virtual lead and in a defensive mindset against Santiago Buitrago. At the end of the day, he jumped into the race lead.

"The stage was not that hard you know, not that many climbs, we gave everything we had, my teammates were amazing today like always," Almeida said in a post-race interview as shared by the team. "We managed to get the bonus seconds to defend ourselves from Santiago, at the finish line the same, it's going to be like this to the end I suppose".

UAE paced in the final tough ascent, and the pace of Pavel Sivakov dropped the former yellow jersey. From there on, it was about controlling Almeida's rivals. He had to respond to Buitrago in the ascent as the two battled for bonifications. Then, Iván Romeo jumped to the stage win with a formidable solo attack. "We were already predicting it, with so many guys close to each other, if one guy gets a gap it's him fighting for the win".

But the Portuguese rider was focused on the race lead, and then sprinted to third in the end, defending himself from the Bahrain - Victorious rider by a mere 2 seconds. "Then we have bonifications in the end as well, I think we were perfect today, we did everything we could, we were able to maximize our performance".  

But the race is far from over, with a tricky hilly stage tomorrow where many can attack, and several bonification points where Buitrago could move into the race lead. "One bonification is enough to put me in second at least so until Sunday we go for every second we can, hopefully we can finish it off but it's far away from that," he concluded.