Fabio Baldato, technical director of UAE Team Emirates, was very satisfied with the great victory of his rider Joao Almeida in the first big mountain stage of the Giro d'Italia 2023.
"Congratulations to him, he was fine and he wanted to try, maybe a little early, but he wanted to try and he put the team to work. He was good and Thomas was also super. João was good, with ambition," he said minutes after the stage win.
He believes that the team did a great job during the stage, placing Diego Ulissi in the breakaway and then working with Davide Formolo and Jay Vine in the peloton to set up an attack. "With Ulissi in the lead we had a point to stop, he did a little bit of work is fine, when the leader is strong the guys do extra work which is important."
Eventually, inside the final 10 kilometers, differences began to be made. Almeida launched two attacks that saw him isolated from the rest of the race, but was joined by Geraint Thomas afterwards. The two collaborated and Almeida won the sprint to the line, his first Giro win.
Baldato does not speak directly of winning the Giro d'Italia, but it is clear from his words that this is the objective with which UAE and Almeida have come to the transalpine country for these three weeks: "We won today, but the race is still very hard, there are three important mountain days and with the impressive time trial, we'll see, I'm crossing my fingers."
Almeida's impressive performance saw him jump from fourth to second in the overall classification and now sits only 18 seconds away from the pink jersey which belongs to Geraint Thomas.
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