"This Is Where I Want To Be For The Next Two Years" — Eulálio Re-Signs With Bahrain Victorious Through 2028 As The Maglia Rosa Closes A Two-Year Extension On The Cleanest Rest-Day-Monday Single-Card Pink-Jersey Reference The Bahraini Operation Has Ever Tabled
Monday late morning Maranello. Afonso Eulálio, the twenty-five-year-old Portuguese rider sitting on the closing 2026 Giro d'Italia maglia rosa with a closing 2:24 cushion over Jonas Vingegaard, has re-signed with Bahrain Victorious on a closing two-year extension through to the closing 2028 season. The closing announcement, made by the squad inside the rest-day team-hotel in Maranello on the closing forty-eight-hour rest-day media-window between Stage 9 and the closing Tuesday Cento-Modena time-trial reference, closes the closing post-Buitrago co-leadership-reset transfer question and locks the squad's closing single-card Grand Tour leadership block onto Eulálio through to the closing 2028 Tour de France.
Eulálio's closing post-Stage-9 press conference, held inside the Maranello team-hotel media room on the closing fifty-three-second-loss Corno alle Scale defence reference, opens with the closing two-year extension as the closing first single-statement opener: "This is where I want to be for the next two years. The team has built around me since I came across from Q36.5 at the end of 2024, and the way we have ridden this corsa rosa — with the closing pink jersey on my shoulders for seven consecutive evenings and a closing 2:24 cushion heading into the rest day — that is not the work of one rider. It is the work of a closing twenty-eight-rider squad, a closing fifteen-person sport-director-and-soigneur block, and the closing seven-year vision the team principal Milan Eržen has built across Bahrain Victorious since 2017."
The closing pre-Stage-9 contract had been due to expire at the closing end of the 2026 season, with the closing post-2026 transfer-market reading Visma-Lease a Bike, UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe all openly briefed on the closing single-card Portuguese pink-jersey card across the closing post-Roglič transfer-market reset. The closing 2.4-million-euro-per-year reported salary represents the cleanest single-rider pay-rise the closing 2026 Bahrain Victorious roster has tabled, and reads as the closing seventh-highest single-rider salary the closing 2026 men's WorldTour calendar carries behind Pogačar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel, Roglič, Van der Poel and Van Aert.
Bahrain Victorious team principal Milan Eržen, opening the closing Monday-late-morning team-hotel media-room press conference at Eulálio's side, confirms the closing post-extension leadership-block reading: "Afonso is our number one rider through to 2028. The closing post-2026 Tour de France brief opens onto a single-card Bahrain Victorious Grand Tour leadership block across the closing 2027 Giro-and-Tour double, with Santiago Buitrago pivoting onto a closing all-in 2027 Vuelta a España brief and Torstein Traen carrying the closing breakaway co-leadership card across the closing first-half-of-season puncheur calendar."
The closing rest-day media-window opens onto a closing pre-Stage-10 forty-two-kilometre Cento-Modena time-trial reference with Vingegaard 1/2 the closing stage-outright favourite, Joshua Tarling 5/2, Eulálio at a closing 33/1 long-shot pink-jersey-defence brief. Closing Stage-10 loss-projection for Eulálio against Vingegaard sits at the 1:35 mark on the closing forty-two-kilometre flat-to-rolling Po-valley reference, derived from the closing pre-Giro Tirreno-Adriatico forty-kilometre Lido-di-Camaiore reading on which the closing Portuguese rolled in at the 1:33 mark off Tarling. Should the projection hold, Vingegaard closes inside 0:49 of the maglia rosa heading into the closing Wednesday Treviso opening, and the closing two-rider duel for the corsa rosa overall folds into a two-week mountain reference.
For Bahrain Victorious the closing extension confirms the closing post-Yates leadership reset onto a single-card Portuguese pink-jersey card and closes the closing post-2025 transfer-market questions on a closing two-year horizon. For Eulálio it is the cleanest single-week financial-and-sporting reset the closing twenty-five-year-old Portuguese has banked across his career, lifting the closing 2026 contract from a closing 720,000-euro annual base to a closing 2.4-million-euro annual base and locking the closing post-Stage-9 maglia rosa cushion onto a closing forty-eight-hour rest-day-Monday transfer-window news cycle. The closing 2026 corsa rosa, with twelve stages still to ride, sits at the cleanest closing pre-rest-day single-card pink-jersey reading the post-Yates Bahrain Victorious era has tabled.