Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis) claimed a stunning victory on stage 5 of the Giro d'Italia in Lucca as a four-rider breakaway managed to hold off the peloton on what should have been a day for the sprinters.
Thomas out-paced Michael Valgren (EF Education-EasyPost) and late attacker Andrea Pietrobon (Polti Kometa). Enzo Paleni (Groupama-FDJ) brought up the rear just ahead of the peloton, led to the line by points classification leader Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek).
"It was like a long, long team pursuit," said Thomas, a world champion and Olympic medalist on the track. "We did an amazing break. I don't believe it - it was really hard in the final. Every pull was full gas. It's unbelievable."
The sprinters' teams made a terrible miscalculation after working all day to control the attackers. An early move of four came back before the halfway point, and after the intermediate sprint, the winning move went clear. Although they only gained a maximum of 90 seconds, none of the chasing teams would fully commit and ended up missing out.
The hesitation benefitted Thomas, who came away with his first WorldTour and first Grand Tour stage victory.
"I think with 10km to go, we were with 40-50 seconds still, and it was a tailwind, so we knew we could not play with the bunch. If we were going 60kph, it was hard for the bunch to close," he said.
"I said maybe today's my day - I thought nobody bets on the attackers today. The final was really critical with the attack with 1km to go by the Italian rider. I said, I'll risk losing, and I don't close the gap. Everything is perfect today.
"I knew the final because I trained there sometimes. I knew the Montemagno in the final, and it helped me to know the final, knowing the cobbles and the corners. It's a nice thing to win in Italy. It means a lot to me."
It was a disappointment for Valgren, who crashed at high speed on a descent during the Route d'Occitannie in 2022, suffering a broken pelvis and ruptures to the major ligaments and meniscus in his knee.
The Dane spent a year with EF-EasyPost's development team while he worked to recover from the injuries and returned to the WorldTour this year. However, he took encouragement from such a strong ride in his first Grand Tour back.
"I was actually only with three or four k's to go [that we believed we could win] because you always think the peloton will take 10 seconds per kilometre more or less," Valgren said. "We kept working well together and there was in our favour kind of downhill - you can only go a certain speed with the same gearing. Chapeau to the other guys for working well together. We didn't start to play the games, so it was nice.
"A few years back, I wasn't sure if I had a contract. The team really helped me through this in a really good way. I'm happy to start to pay things back - I'm just grateful I can still be a cyclist."
How it unfolded
The Giro d'Italia should, in theory, have finally settled in for a standard day of Grand Tour racing but halfway through the stage, no breakaway could go clear. The attempts started from the flag drop with Harrison Wood (Cofidis) attacking with Mattia Bais (Polti-Kometa) and Lewis Askey (Groupama-FDJ).
Wood struggled to hold the pace but was replaced in front with Ewen Costiou (Arkéa-B&B Hotels), with the leading trio chased by Simon Geschke (Cofidis) and Manuele Tarozzi (VF Group-Bardiani-CSF Faizanè). However, after only a few kilometres, Costiou sat up. Geschke and Tarozzi made it to the two remaining leaders, but their time out front was limited.
Soudal-Quickstep set a brisk pace, halving the gap and, just 30km into the stage, seemed to want to nullify the breakaway. Tarozzi attacked his companions on an unclassified climb, and when they caught him, they only had 25 seconds left on the chasing peloton.
The gap went back out to a minute before the only climb of the day, the category 3 Passo del Bracco, and then dropped again on the climb.
The pace saw sprinters Fabio Jakobsen (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL), Tim Merlier (Soudal-Quickstep), Fernando Gaviria (Movistar) and Caleb Ewan (Jayco-AlUla) lose touch as Alpecin-Deceuninck set a brisk pace.
The breakaway managed to stay away to sprint to the top of the Passo del Bracco, where Geschke out-paced Tarozzi to take the points just 12 seconds ahead of the bunch, then were caught on the descent with 111.5km still to race.
It wasn't too long before the dropped sprinters rejoined the peloton, perhaps a few litres less in the tank after the chase, but the peloton stayed together through to the intermediate sprint in Ceparana, where Kaden Groves (Alpecin-Deceuninck) got the jump on Olav Kooij (Visma) with maglia ciclamino Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) third.
Attacks came straightaway after the sprint, with Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis), Michael Valgren (EF Education-EasyPost), Enzo Paleni (Groupama-FDJ), and Andrea Pietrobon (Polti-Kometa) quickly gaining a gap of 1:30.
Pietrobon led the breakaway uncontested through the Intergiro sprint with 58km to go as the gap hovered at 1:15, with Alpecin-Deceuninck doing most of the work.
The Alpecin riders surged to the line for the sprint with Groves in tow, and the Australian snatched four of the remaining points to Milan's one.
Lidl-Trek took charge of the chase as the breakaway led over the final climb at Montemagno, where Valgren powered the lead group over the summit with nearly a minute on the peloton.
When the quartet in front had 5km to go, they still had 40 seconds, and the peloton was losing engine power, with teams having to sacrifice their lead-out men to try to bring them back.
Ineos finally came forward with 3.5km to go and started to rapidly reduce the breakaway's advantage as the race reached the Lucca ring road, if only to keep Geraint Thomas out of trouble before the 3km mark.
Pietrobon began to sit on, letting Thomas, Paleni and Valgren do all of the work. Inside 3km to go, Ineos pulled off and left the rest of the pacemaking to the sprint lead-outs but it was too little, too late.
Pietrobon made his move after the kilometre-to-go banner but went just too soon, and Thomas swept past in sight of the line to snatch the stage win over Valgren. Milan won the sprint for fifth.
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