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João Almeida (Quick Step) became the best Portuguese of all time this Sunday in the Volta à Itália by bike. In a race in which he owned the pink jersey for 15 of the 21 stages, the Caldas da Rainha cyclist managed to take a position on the last day, an individual time trial of 15.7 km, beating the Spanish Pello Bilbao (Bahrain ).
This fourth place is the best classification in the history of a Portuguese in the Giro, surpassing the fifth place obtained by José Azevedo in 2001. Better than Almeida in the great tours, only Joaquim Agostinho, second in the Vuelta (1974) and third in the Tour (1978 and 1979).
In addition to João Almeida, this Giro was also historic for Portugal by winning the mountain award from Rúben Guerreiro (EF Pro Cycling), the first time that a Portuguese cyclist achieved this classification in one of the Grand Tours and won a stage.
At the start of the last day, the first two of the general classification were tied, but the “chrono” ended, as expected, by being favorable to the British Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos), who was superior to the Australian Jai Hindley (Sunweb) . Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb) was third overall.
The “chrono” of the last day was for the Italian Filippo Ganna (Ineos), who won his fourth stage of this edition of the Giro, three time trials.
Classification of the 21st stage
1st Filippo Ganna (Ineos), 17 min 16 sec
2nd Victor Campenaerts (NTT), a 32s
3rd Rohan Dennis (Ineos), a 32
4th João Almeida (Deceuninck – Quick-Step), at 41s
5th Miles Scotson (Groupama – FDJ), at 41s
(…)
63rd Warrior Ruben (Cycling EF Pro), a 2 min 02 s
Final ranking
1st Tao Geoghegan Hart (Ineos), 85h40m21s
2nd Jai Hindley (Sunweb), 39 years old
Wilco Kelderman (Sunweb), 1m29s
4th João Almeida (Deceuninck – Quick-Step), at 2m57s
5th Pello Bilbao (Bahrain – McLaren), at 3 min 09
(…)
33rd Rúben Guerreiro (EF Pro Cycling), at 1h58m58s
