The bizarre story behind the time trial duels between Schachmann and Almeida, and Van Gils's wrong turn

First, let's look at the Belgian from Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe because what exactly went wrong for Van Gils in that last corner of the time trial? He was steering neatly to the left and had 100 meters to go, but suddenly, he decided to steer to the right and almost crashed into a startled organization member. It was an expensive mistake because Van Gils ended up in 35th place, 48 seconds behind Schachmann. Without that mistake, he might have been in the top 25.

Then there are Schachmann and Almeida. What do the German from Quick Step and the Portuguese from UAE have in common? Apart from the fact that they can both cycle incredibly fast, they have now completed four time trials in a row at almost precisely the same speed! Het Nieuwsblad noted that the duo have been keeping pace in time trials since 2021. And we're talking about almost exactly the exact times; the difference each time was in the numbers after the decimal point.

The copying behavior began at the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021 when Schachmann recorded a time of 58.34 minutes. Almeida recorded exactly the same time, the difference being in the thousandths of a second. Thus, Schachmann finished fifteenth, Almeida sixteenth. Three years later, at the World Time Trial Championships in Zurich, it happened again: the German rode to 23rd place, with a time exactly six-hundredths of a second faster than Almeida.

The Tour of the Algarve happened again on day five at the beginning of this year. This time, the difference was five-hundredths of a second, but again, it favored Schachmann. Fifth place to sixth place this time... And then there was the Basque time trial on Monday, which the man from The Wolfpack won. Schachmann was 0.54 seconds faster than Almeida and 0.76 seconds faster than Florian Lipowitz of Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe. Unbelievable!