Jan Christen leads Joao Almeida home in UAE one-two on Volta ao Algarve summit finish as Vingegaard & Roglic fail to make an impact

UAE Team Emirates - XRG's Jan Christen has stunned to take a summit win and control of the GC at the 2025 Volta ao Algarve ahead of teammate Joao Almeida in a UAE one-two. Notably, Jonas Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic failed to make a real impact in their first test of the season.

Heading into the final 60km, a group of five riders held around 3:30 over the peloton. Among the lead group were notable names such as Tobias Bayer of the Alpecin - Deceuninck team and Brent Van Moer of Lotto. In the peloton behind, Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe and Team Visma | Lease a Bike were doing much of the work on the front, working in service of Primoz Roglic and Jonas Vingegaard respectively ahead of the day's final climb.

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Because of the work done by Visma and Red Bull, as the 30km to go marker was passed, the advantage of the now-four man lead group had been cut to just 46 seconds. With just over 20km to go, the break's day out front was done. As the climbing then really started to ramp up the final 15km, a slew of riders were immediately cast out the back of the peloton thanks to the fierce pace being set by Jan Tratnik.

When Tratnik pulled over at 12km to go, Roglic himself took control at the front of the bunch momentarily, but as the Slovenian threatened to put in a big attack, Vingegaard was straight on his back wheel to nullify. Although the likes of Romain Bardet and Julian Alaphilippe also made attacks, the next move to get a gap was a 5-man group led by Laurens De Plus and followed by Jan Christen, Neilson Powless, Remy Rochas and Ben Tulett.

A second attack from De Plus at just over 5km to go, saw the INEOS Grenadiers star get some freedom at the front momentarily, but Christen managed drag himself back to the front, as did Powless and Luca Vergallito. As the leaders headed through 2km to go, the first big move came from behind with an explosive attack by Jonas Vingegaard. Roglic and Joao Almeida were quickly on the Dane's wheel though, and with 1km to go, the lead group still held around 20 seconds lead. 

With the gradient hitting double digits in the final kilometre, there was still a lot of riding to go and Jan Christen was the first to blow things up in the leaders. De Plus was fighting hard to stay in touch with young Swiss, but in the end it was Almeida who came from nowhere to take 2nd.

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