Tour of Poland stage 2: João Almeida vaults into GC lead with stage victory

João Almeida took control of the GC at the Tour of Poland after taking an emphatic victory on stage 2. Almeida launched a daring attack inside the final 1.5km and then held off Diego Ulissi (UAE-Team Emirates) to take the uphill stage win and the GC lead.

Almeida now leads Matej Mohorič (Bahrain-Victorious) by four seconds after Mohorič held on for third place.

“It was quite hard, I could see Mohorič was quite strong as he was attacking on the descents,” Almeida said. “I tried to play it cool and try everything in the last climb, and it went pretty well.”

Almeida turned heads in 2020 with his fourth overall at the Giro d’Italia, and the young Portuguese rider is still looking for his first GC victory at the WorldTour level. He entered the Tour of Poland as one of the top favorites to battle for the GC alongside Michal Kwiatkowski (Ineos Grenadiers) and Mohoric. Almeida said he intends to try and defend the jersey for the remainder of the race.

“It’s a good sign,” he said. “It’s a long way to the finish but I think we will try to defend the jersey.”

The thrilling finish came after a 200-kilometer stage from Zamośč to Przemyśl that took in three categorized climbs. An early breakaway made its way from the peloton after a few kilometers, with Taco van der Hoorn (Intermaché-Wanty-Gobert) powering the group ahead of Sebastian Langveld (EF Education-Nippo), Gabriel Cullaigh (Movistar Team), Patryk Stosz (Voster ATS), and Nikita Stalnov (Astana-Premier Tech).

Deceuninck-Quick-Step rode the front with UAE-Team Emirates, and the gap never exceeded five minutes. As the gap tumbled a trio of riders rode clear from the peloton to add horsepower to the move, with Lukas Postlberger (Bora-Hansgrohe) eventually attacking clear on a solo move. But an injection of speed from behind brought the group together for the final push to the line.

“They never gave a lot of time to the breakaway,” Almedia said. ” It was basically dead. There were still five guys on the front race who were a bit tired. But the peloton was always under control.”

Almeida’s next major GC test comes on Thursday’s stage 4, which finishes with the uphill finish to the Bukovina Resort.