João Almeida claimed a stunning overall victory in the Itzulia Basque Country, shredding the GC field on a brutally tough day to both earn a second stage win and simultaneously become Portugal's first-ever overall winner of the 101-year-old race.
Enric Mas (Movistar) and Almeida attacked from a small lead group with 5.5km to go, with Almeida then comfortably outsprinting Mas at the finish to take his second stage in three days. Stage 5 winner Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), in the breaks all day and having made much of the running in the late climbs, finished third, 13 seconds back.
Overall, Almeida succeeded his teammate Juan Ayuso as the overall winner of Itzulia Basque Country, with Mas moving up second place on GC thanks to his strong last day of racing. Early leader Max Schachmann (Soudal-QuickStep) claimed third.
UAE Team Emirates dominated a dificult, rain-soaked stage with nearly 4,000 metres of vertical climbing, as Almeida personally ripped a reduced bunch apart on the race's hardest ascent, the category 1 Izua and then led the pursuit of lone breakaway Healy.
Having caught the Irishman 20 kilometres from the line, Almeida followed Mas when the Movistar rider raised the pace on a short kicker in the finish town of Ermua. He then outsprinted the Spaniard for his first WorldTour stage race win since the Tour de Pologne back in 2021.
"I'm very pleased," Almeida, the race leader since he soloed to victory on stage 4, said afterwards. "The team did a great job, we did it perfectly, and that's all there was to it. Onto the next one!
"I've been in good shape, the route wasn't ideal for me, but we always did the best we could. We have to be very satisfied with this."
2025 Itzulia Basque Country: Ben Healy on the attack on stage 6 (Image credit: Getty Images)
How it unfolded
One of the race's earliest attackers on stage 2, Diego Uriarte (Kern-Pharma) was also the first to go for it on the opening stretch out of the start-finish town of Eibar. But his move fizzled out fast and the peloton started to tackle the combined opening challenge of the category 3 Elkorrieta and first-category Azurki, which followed on immediately, all together.
An enormous group of nearly 20 riders then managed to extract itself from the Azurki, including former overall winners Dani Martínez (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) and Ion Izagirre (Cofidis), Healy, Sepp Kuss (Visma-Lease a Bike) and mountains classification leader Bruno Armirail (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale).
Over the next ascent, the Krabellin, the break began to split apart, and 100 kilometres from the finish Armirail went clear. He started scooping up more and more points on the climbs to buttress his mountain classification lead. But with barely a minute on a chasing group of 13 at the stage's halfway point and three big classified climbs still remaining, it was far from certain he could stay ahead.
Almeida, meanwhile, with no less than four teammates still guiding him along, was safely ensconced in the peloton some three minutes back and happily watching the kilometres click down.
Armirail was possibly even slightly relieved when finally three riders bridged across from the break: Dani Martínez, Healy and Jordan Jegat (TotalEnergies). Given his GC status, Jegat was one of the keenest to drive the stage leaders' group as they tore through the finish town of Eibar for one of multiple local hilly laps.
However, the Frenchman's efforts were not enough to prevent a further seven riders joining: Bauke Mollema (Lidl-Trek), Izagirre, Callum Scotson (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale), Warren Barguil and Guillermo Martínez (both Picnic-PostNL), Groupama-FDJ's Romain Grégoire and Marc Hirshi (Tudor).
2025 Itzulia Basque Country stage 6: the break of the day (Image credit: Getty Images)
The weather was not in the breakaway's favour as after five days of dry conditions, heavy rain set in, briefly at first on the fifth classified climb, the gently rising category 2 Karabieta, and then with a lot more teeming down in the final hour. That steadily worsening weather didn't stop Armirail from taking a definitive lead on the mountains ranking at the top of the Karabieta, and the Frenchman notably began to take things more gently in the break as a result.
At the opposite end of the move, meanwhile, Hirschi pushed on solo on the final segment of the long descent off the Karabieta, quickly gaining a double-digit advantage.
The Swiss racer's bid for glory didn't work out, but the higher pace he set briefly garnered the break a further 40 seconds, and also weeded out a few of the weaker elements like Mollema. Things were not looking so promising behind, though, because UAE were laying down a ferocious pace in the peloton. The leader's squad barely even paused when Almeida was briefly delayed by the foot of the Izua by a slow-motion crash involving Ilan van Wilder (Soudal-QuickStep) on a very slippery right hand bend, squeezing the gap to less than 30 seconds.
Healy made a determined bid to stay ahead as the break crumbled, pulling Scotson and Dani Martínez with him on the punishing Izua. But behind, the UAE troops were pushing on hard as Almeida regained contact after his brief delay, causing Max Schachmann (Soudal-QuickStep), second overall, to fall back while another GC contender, Florian Lipowitz (Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe) was unlucky enough to need a bike change and lose time as well.
Undeterred, Healy then hit hard yet again as the rest of the break was being mopped up, maintaining a solo advantage of nearly a minute on its most punishing slopes. However, Almeida personally began a relentless drive that shredded the chase group to just Segat and Enric Mas (Movistar), and even saw his own last teammate, Marc Soler in serious trouble near the top.
The yellow jersey group regained considerable firepower on the flatter roads that followed, including Isaac del Toro and Soler for Almeida as well as Thibau Nys and Mattias Skjelmose for Lidl-Trek.
Both Almeida and Skjelmose had GC interests, so the Portuguese racer and Dane put their teammates to work and the hunt for Healy began in earnest.
Itzulia Basque Country stage 6: Almeida destroys the field late on (Image credit: Getty Images)
Twenty kilometres from the finish and deep into the last classified climb of the race, category 3, Trabakua, Healy was caught by the six chasers. As the rain began to fall yet again, Almeida made a big dig that reminded his fellow-travellers once again that even if he had not yet opted to go clear, he was the rider making the running.
A spectacular fall for Skjelmose, spinning out on a rain-soaked bend on a late descent, fortunately was without major consequences, but the punishing little series of climbs that followed in any case splintered the leaders' group to just Mas, Almeida and Healy. Del Toro regained contact on a fast descent, only for Mas to try his best, but fail, to drop the race leader with 5.5 kilometres to go.
Mas' audible plea 'Will you let me win the stage?' as he and Almeida plunged back down into Eibar for one last time presumably received short shrift from the race leader, given what happened afterwards.
Sure enough, after the duo of race leaders powered together to the line through the very technical finale, Almeida netted a second and final triumph to seal UAE's second week-long WorldTour stage victory of 2025.
2025 Itzulia Basque Country: the final podium (L-Enric Mas, C-João Almeida, R-Max Schachmann) (Image credit: Getty Images)
Alasdair Fotheringham has been reporting on cycling since 1991. He has covered every Tour de France since 1992 bar one, as well as numerous other bike races of all shapes and sizes, ranging from the Olympic Games in 2008 to the now sadly defunct Subida a Urkiola hill climb in Spain. As well as working for Cyclingnews, he has also written for The Independent, The Guardian, ProCycling, The Express and Reuters.
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