Ball – João Almeida champion in the fight against the clock (cycling)

Joao Almeida (Emirates Team) confirmed this Friday the nepotism attributed to him and became the national time champion in the elite category.

Almeida repeats the feat of 2021, by scoring, at the age of 24, the fifth Test tournament in his career – junior (2014), junior (2016), under-23 (2019) and elite (2021 and 2023).

In a 33.6km route – done both ways, with a U-turn at 16.7km, Joao Almeida posted the best time: 19.39m, 16 seconds less than Evo Oliveira (UAE) and 1.11 minutes less than Carlos Salguero (AP Hotels-Tavira) The differences in the goal increased to 35 seconds for the first and 2.29 minutes for the second.

“I was somewhat surprised because, coming from a stop after the Giro, I ended up doing better than I expected. The national championship is a race that everyone loves to win. And for those who run abroad, running in Portugal has a different flavour. The goal was for someone to win What’s on the team, and we got 1-2, so it was… EXCELLENT! [dia 25]In the long term, we want to keep the title in the team, said Joao Almeida.

In general, there were no big surprises, although a better performance was expected from Rafael Reis (glass drive), the champion of the title (2022), who did not exceed sixth place, 2.58 meters behind the winner.

There was a significant improvement in the performances of Joaquim Silva (3rd), Carlos Salguero (4th) and Emanuel Duarte (5th). After the good results achieved in the discipline in 2023, 15 runners participated in the national championship.

15 cyclists participated in the sub-category 23. Antonio Morgado (Huggins), who was not part of the list of subscribers on the federation’s official page, became a national champion, followed by his teammate Gonzalo Tavares (Huggins) with 27.27 seconds, with Daniel Lima (Israel) to complete the podium in third place, 33.73 seconds behind the winner. .

Antonio Morgado won his fifth time trial title: junior (2019 and 2020), junior (2021 and 2022), and under-23 (2023).

In the women’s sector, Ana Caramillo (Maiatos) won the Elite title and Beatriz Pereira (Bizcaia) won the Under-23 title.

The National Women’s Championship will be held on Saturday in all categories, with 10 registered in the sub-class, 23 in the elite category, and 19 in the master’s category. The elite will ride 89km and the juniors and under-23s 66.4km.

If there is no last-minute news – as there was in the time trial -, the 17 registered under-23 riders will cover 141 kilometers starting at 2.30pm, starting and finishing in Mogaduru.