"Galicia Has Given Me The First Stage Race Of The Year And The Best Climbing Legs I Have Had Since Tenerife" — Adam Yates Seals O Gran Camiño 2026 Overall On The Monte Trega Summit Finish As UAE's Ardennes-Week Captain Delivers A Statement Of Form
Saturday in Pontevedra. Adam Yates has sealed his first stage-race win of the 2026 season at the fourth edition of O Gran Camiño, defending the overall lead he had built across Galicia on the final-stage summit finish at Monte Trega. The victory hands the 33-year-old Briton — and UAE Team Emirates-XRG, in the week they have turned over to their Ardennes-week captain — a first 2.1 title since the Critérium du Dauphiné and the clearest signal of form ahead of next week's Liège-Bastogne-Liège.
The four-stage race through Galicia's rugged interior had been a calibration test — a route with three summit finishes, a mid-race hilltop ITT, and a GC field rebuilt around riders peaking for the Ardennes triple rather than the cobbled Classics. Across 672 kilometres of road racing, the general classification had churned: Julius Johansen opened the race with a breakaway win on Stage 1, Carlos Canal took a reduced-bunch sprint on Stage 2, and Iván Romeo produced an 11-kilometre solo for Stage 3 that briefly put Jørgen Nordhagen in the leader's jersey. But the Monte Trega ramp — 7.8 kilometres at 6.3% with a final pitch above 12% — was built for climbers in Ardennes form, not breakaway opportunists, and Yates's stage-winning attack at 2.4 kilometres to go closed the GC in a single hammer blow.
"Galicia has given me the first stage race of the year and the best climbing legs I have had since the Teide block," Yates said in the finish-line mixed zone. "We came here as a squad built around the Ardennes — João is in Monaco with Tadej, Brandon is in Abu Dhabi with the time-trial team, Pavel is in Andorra. This was my race to lead. I am thirty-three and I have never won O Gran Camiño before, so the jersey is new and it is good."
Yates takes the overall by 28 seconds from Nordhagen, 41 seconds from Richard Carapaz, and 58 seconds from Mikel Landa. The five-rider top ten inside a minute is the tightest O Gran Camiño finish in the race's four-year history. For UAE Team Emirates-XRG, the win is the squad's eighth stage-race title of 2026 — a number no team has reached by mid-April since Sky's 2013 season — and confirms Yates as the team's Ardennes captain across a week in which Tadej Pogačar skips both Amstel and Flèche Wallonne to target Liège alone.
The tactical read is the one every DS in the Ardennes hotel will make tonight. Yates's power file from the Monte Trega summit — 460 watts for 18 minutes, 6.1 watts-per-kilo on an altitude-adjusted reading — is a four-watt improvement on the equivalent 2025 Tour de France Grand Colombier effort and a six-watt improvement on the 2024 Volta a Catalunya Montjuïc climb. Liège-Bastogne-Liège, which UAE ride seven days after the O Gran Camiño dismount, is the race Yates has come closest to winning without a podium — fifth in 2023, fourth in 2024, sixth in 2025. The 2026 version of Yates is the best version in five seasons.
For Caja Rural-Seguros RGA the race had a different texture. Julius Johansen's Stage 1 win, in a team kit bearing the #FuerzaJaume armbands for their teammate Jaume Guardeño — who remains in a medically induced coma at the Hospital Taulí two weeks after a training accident — was the emotional centrepiece of the week. Johansen spoke at the finish of "riding for a friend in a hospital bed" and said the team had taken the week to Galicia in part "because Jaume would have been here, and we wanted to ride the race he would have wanted to ride." Manager Juan Manuel Hernández confirmed the team will wear the same armbands at the Tour of Turkey and the Itzulia Basque Country follow-ups.
For Yates, the week ahead is the straightforward one. The UAE team bus transfers overnight from Pontevedra to Zaragoza, from Zaragoza to Madrid, and from Madrid to the team's Alicante service course for a 24-hour decompression. Yates flies to Liège on Wednesday for the Monday Flèche Wallonne recon and a Tuesday team briefing. "I have not been this fresh seven days out from La Doyenne since 2024," he said. "If the legs on Monte Trega are the legs I bring to Bastogne, I will be a race for Tadej." A UAE 1-2 at Liège would be the squad's first Monument double since 2023.