UAE Team Emirates are set to go the 2024 Tour de France leaving nothing to chance. The team's provisional lineup for the race includes all their big hitters, such as Tadej Pogacar, Joao Almeida, Juan Ayuso, Pavel Sivakov, Marc Soler and Adam Yates.
Can a team full of GC leaders really coexist though? "I think as long as we are all on the same page, it can work really really good," Almeida answers when quizzed about this by GCN. "But if one guy is not on the page, then we might have a problem. It is up to the directors to manage it, I will do my job and my thing, then I can only control what I do, not what other people do."
Although Almeida has six Grand Tours under his belt, this will be the first time in his career that he takes on the Tour de France. "It was my call. I wanted to do it already this year, but I got Covid in 2022 and I was aiming for the podium and I couldn’t get it that year," he explains. "So before I moved on to the Tour I wanted to do the podium. I did it this year and then I just turn a page and go for the next one."
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"Every race I go to, I want to do my best. Of course, according to my teammates as well, if they are better than me, I will try to help them as well. And then of course, I want to be in my top shape in the Tour but with Tadej and the other guys, we will just see how things go and it’s also a pleasure for me to just help them out and do whatever I can."
From the outside at least, Tadej Pogacar would seem the outright leader of the team, having twice before won the Maillot Jaune and finished second behind Jonas Vingegaard at the last two editions. "If I can win a stage in the Tour, that would be a dream come true and a podium would be amazing," Almeida says of his own plans. "Of course, any Grand Tour would just be 'career is done,' whatever comes after just happens - I wouldn’t retire because I need to keep working - but I would just be super satisfied."
"Always I am wanting more, that fever of competition, that has always driven me," the Portuguese concludes.
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