João Almeida: "I was suffering a lot but I managed to save the situation"

Over the first week of the race, which last year proved an issue in João Almeida's tilt at the Giro d'Italia last year, there have been a few riders flying under the radar and the UAE Team Emirates leader is surely one of them, riding conservatively into second place in the GC after the first real differences were made in the race.

Almeida had said both at the start and finish of the stage that his feelings weren't the best, however that didn't prevent him from riding up the Blockhaus in the GC group and finishing fifth at the end of the day, arriving on the same time as stage winner Jai Hindley. Almeida now sits only 12 seconds behind Juan Pedro López, and is the first rider in the battle between those that came with high GC ambitions.

"I was not feeling so good all day. I was suffering a lot but I managed to save the situation. I’m happy I could finish with the front group, I was on the limit but I looked around and saw that everyone was struggling too," he said at the end of the stage.

He was dropped several times, but in his traditional style of riding, he paced himself back up into the fight, and reeled in the attacks that came in the final kilometers of the stage sparked by Richard Carapaz. "In the end it was a great race today and I suffered through and made the best of it," he concluded.