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Giro d'Italia

Almeida Ruled Out Of 2026 Giro d'Italia — UAE Team Emirates-XRG's Maglia Rosa Project Collapses Ten Days Before The Bulgaria Grande Partenza As Lingering Viral Illness Forces Withdrawal

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 28 APRIL 2026

João Almeida will not start the 2026 Giro d'Italia, the 27-year-old Portuguese announcing on Instagram on Monday evening that a lingering viral infection has forced him to abandon a campaign he was built around for nine months. UAE Team Emirates-XRG confirmed the withdrawal in a statement on Tuesday morning, ten days before the 9 May Grande Partenza in Nessebar on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. The decision removes the rider widely identified as Jonas Vingegaard's only credible GC challenger from the start sheet and comprehensively dismantles UAE's pink-jersey roster.

"Sickness in the past months has affected my preparations too much and has meant I just won't quite be ready in time, which is a shame as it's a race I love so much," Almeida wrote in his statement. The Portuguese had already missed the Itzulia Basque Country earlier in April and skipped the Tour of the Alps, where his planned high-altitude block had been rebuilt three times around an illness pattern that began with what the team initially diagnosed as a routine flu in late February. "A few days after Algarve I got sick with flu symptoms and I wasn't able to complete a training session until four days before the start of the race," he wrote, referring to the Volta ao Algarve in February where he finished fourth.

The team's medical staff confirmed that subsequent blood work identified a viral syndrome consistent with a post-viral fatigue presentation rather than a single acute infection, and that Almeida has been unable to put together more than two consecutive training blocks since the Algarve race. UAE's planned April training camp on Tenerife was cancelled, with Almeida instead spending three weeks at home in Andorra under the supervision of team doctor Adriano Rotunno. A return-to-racing test at the Tour de Romandie was floated and abandoned earlier this month when power numbers failed to recover to within the team's pre-season tolerance bands.

The withdrawal comprehensively reshapes UAE's Giro line-up. Adam Yates and Jay Vine are now expected to take co-leadership, with team manager Mauro Gianetti telling L'Équipe on Tuesday that "the leadership is open and we will race smart, but we accept that we have lost our Plan A and the script changes." Vine has been climbing well at the Tour of the Alps earlier this month and is the team's primary high-altitude option, while Yates — second at the 2023 Giro — offers GC experience and is the only UAE rider in the last twelve months to have finished a Grand Tour inside the top five. Marc Soler stays in the line-up as a road captain.

The pre-race market has moved sharply. Jonas Vingegaard, on Visma-Lease a Bike's first-ever Giro start with the full A-team, has contracted from 5/6 on Monday morning to 1/2 by Tuesday lunchtime, the shortest pre-Giro favourite price since Eddy Merckx's 1973 4/6, and three of the four major British operators have suspended outright markets pending further news from Bulgaria. Giulio Pellizzari — who beat Vingegaard at the Tour of the Alps last week — sharpens to 7/1, and Richard Carapaz moves to 12/1 as the most credible non-Vingegaard option from outside Italy.

The blow lands at the worst possible moment for UAE Team Emirates-XRG, who have already endured a turbulent spring centred on Tadej Pogačar's one-day-race-led calendar and have not won a Grand Tour since the 2024 Vuelta. The team's stated target of "winning all three Grand Tours in 2026" — a line repeated through the off-season by both Gianetti and team owner Sheikh Mansoor — now requires Yates or Vine to do something neither has done in three Grand Tour seasons together: ride a podium in Italy. The May 8 prologue in Bulgaria leaves nine training days for a tactical rebuild that will dominate UAE's pre-Giro communications.

For Almeida personally, the withdrawal closes a window that may not reopen. The Portuguese turns 28 in August and has finished on the Giro podium twice (third in 2023 and 2024) without ever leading a Grand Tour as the undisputed team leader from start to finish. UAE have indicated that the Critérium du Dauphiné remains the rebuilding target, with the Tour de France as a domestique role for Pogačar and the Vuelta a España as a possible late-season GC reset. "I will come back stronger," Almeida wrote — a line every cyclist with a virus has written, but one that for the rider closest to a maglia rosa within the current UAE structure carries a particular weight.

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