“There’s not a big difference with Jonas Vingegaard” – João Almeida hunts Giro d'Italia glory inspired by Tadej Pogacar & Cristiano Ronaldo

João Almeida is not talking like a rider making up numbers. When he looks back at La Vuelta a Espana 2025 and forward to the 2026 Giro d'Italia, the message is clear. He believes the gap to the very top is small, manageable, and shrinking.

At the Vuelta last season, Almeida finished second overall behind Jonas Vingegaard, exactly 1 minute 16 seconds down after three weeks of racing. That result now frames how he sees his own future. The Portuguese rider is not discouraged by finishing runner-up. He sees it as proof that winning a Grand Tour is realistic.

“The objective at the Giro will be to win it, and I will do everything I can to make it a reality,” Almeida said in conversation with Gazzetta dello Sport. Reflecting on his duel with Vingegaard in Spain, he added: “At the Vuelta, a few months ago, there was not a big difference with Vingegaard. He was coming from the Tour and probably was not at his best… But neither was I.”

Those words are not bravado. They are grounded in experience. Almeida has now stood on the podium of multiple Grand Tours and has spent long stretches in leader’s jerseys. But it was the 2020 Giro d'Italia that first convinced him he belonged at the very top. “Yes, it was a decisive experience for me,” he said of that race. “I was young, I had a lot to learn, and those three weeks were a wonderful journey of growth.”

Vingegaard is now the measuring stick. At La Vuelta 2025, their rivalry became a genuine two-rider contest through much of the race, with Almeida close enough to believe that the final step is no longer out of reach. “Every year I have improved, and I have the feeling that it can happen again in 2026,” Almeida said. “I say that realistically.”

That realism is central to how he talks about winning a Grand Tour. There is no talk of destiny or guarantees. Only of progression, detail, and belief built from evidence. “I know my body very well. I know how to listen to it. I have a clear perception of how far I can go,” he explained when asked about his greatest strength as an athlete.

For Almeida, that self knowledge is what turns a second place into a future plan rather than a ceiling.

Inside UAE Team Emirates, Almeida also has daily access to what the very highest level looks like. Tadej Pogacar, his teammate, is not just a rival in races but a reference point in training, recovery, and mentality. “First of all, simply because of… genetics, he is the best of all,” Almeida said of Pogacar. “To that, he adds the fact that he works very hard.”

The difference between them, in Almeida’s eyes, is not talent but total immersion. “I do not think I have an obsession with cycling, in the sense that it is not 100 per cent of my life,” he said. “Tadej has that, for him it is. He remains a normal guy, but it is as if he breathes cycling, which is his only true passion.”

That mindset does not come only from cycling. One of Almeida’s biggest inspirations comes from another Portuguese icon. “Because he came from nothing, he worked incredibly hard to make it,” Almeida said of Cristiano Ronaldo. “And he also represents great values. And he can be considered the greatest footballer of all time.”

For Almeida, Ronaldo represents what long-term belief and relentless work can produce. “He will always be number one for me,” he said. “I have never met him so far, I hope that sooner or later it will happen.”

That combination of internal reference points, Pogacar inside his team, Ronaldo from his own country, shapes how Almeida sees his own path.

Almeida’s relationship with cycling has always been intense, even if he does not call it an obsession. “I have always been sporty, since I was little,” he said. “I tried football, swimming, but ever since I can remember… I was riding my bike. Every day.”

As a teenager, that meant training late into the evening, even when conditions were far from ideal. “It happened, and quite often,” he said when asked about riding in the dark. “I finished at 7.30pm, ate something quickly, and then went riding until 9.30–10pm.”

Sometimes, even the lights failed. “Sometimes it happened that the light did not work and I came home without it. Dangerous, yes, but that is what happened to me.”

That persistence is still visible in how he talks about his future. There is no drama in his ambition. Just a steady insistence that the final step is there to be taken. After finishing just 1 minute 16 seconds behind Jonas Vingegaard at La Vuelta 2025, Almeida no longer talks like a rider chasing a miracle. He talks like someone who has seen the gap clearly and believes it is small enough to close.