Alexis Guérin wins the 2026 Volta a Portugal by 1 minute 2 seconds
The Anicolor-Campicarn rider closed out the 87th edition on Porto's Avenida dos Aliados ahead of his own team-mate, the two-time defending champion. Rui Oliveira took the final stage from Maia to Porto.
Alexis Guérin has won the 87th Volta a Portugal. The Frenchman rode onto Porto’s Avenida dos Aliados on Sunday 1 minute and 2 seconds clear of Artem Nych, and the detail that gives the result its flavour is that Nych rides for the same team and had won the previous two editions. Pedro Silva of Feira dos Sofás-Boavista completed the podium at 4 minutes 30.
The closing 136.9-kilometre stage from Maia to Porto went to Rui Oliveira of UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Guérin crossed eighth, two seconds down, which changed nothing — the stage result and general classification are in the race record.
Where the race was won
Guérin won two stages, and they were the two that mattered. The first at Torre, the day the Covilhã mountain split the race and he took the yellow jersey. The second at Senhora da Graça on stage nine, into Mondim de Basto — the climb that has decided this race for decades, and which this time closed the account rather than opening it.
In between, Julius Johansen took the Águeda time trial having already won the Lisbon prologue, with stages going to Francisco Campos, Santiago Mesa, Leangel Linarez, Xabier Isasa and Adrià Pericas. Ten stages, 1,430 kilometres, Lisbon to Porto.
The edition that will be remembered for something else
This Volta cannot be told without the death of Finlay Tarling, the British rider with NSN Development Team who crashed on stage eight between Melgaço and Fafe. The race stopped, resumed two days later in Paredes by agreement between the organisers and the teams, and rode out the rest of the route with the question unresolved. We covered the crash and what the GNR set out about it, and the restart in Paredes.
What is left is an edition with a new winner, a Portuguese rider on the podium, and an absence that no result addresses.
By Vasco Almada
Image: _morgado / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
