“I have so many things to say, but let’s let the images do the talking“. Atrocious mockery at the finish line in Lucca for Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), particularly piqued by the progress of the stage. The blue was considered by all the number one favorite to find an encore after yesterday, and the ease with which he regulated the group in the sprint of the placed, for a tasteless fifth place, only increases the regrets. The victory of fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia 2024 goes surprisingly to Benjamin Thomas (Cofidis), capable of triumphing in the sprint after a four-man breakaway of just over 70 kilometres. The Frenchman went to catch Andrea Pietrobon (Team Polti Kometa) two hundred meters from the finish line, who had tried to anticipate the sprint by starting a thousand meters from the banner.
A particular stagewith the work, in hindsight, wicked, of Alpecin – Deceuninck on the Bracco Pass to make some sprinters break away, but with the finish place 110 km from the top there was plenty of space to recover. After the group canceled the first escape attempt, four of them started at -75all great pedalers, to whom the platoon gave too much space. Lidl-Trek which initially tried to work towards closing, but was unable to find collaboration. Fifty seconds for the pacesetters who didn’t drop, and when the other teams realized the danger and moved to the front it was already too late.
He made his debut as too diplomatic after Milan’s arrival: “In the end we came close, in a certain sense I’m also happy that a track racer like Benjamin won (Thomas, champion in the velodrome who will be a great protagonist in Paris 2024, ed), he deserves it“.
After the usual compliments, the Italian moves on to compliments for his teammates: “But you know when you get there, you can smell the victory and you feel good, we worked well in the last kilometers, moving well together, obviously it’s disappointing“.
“The Giro isn’t over today, so in short we’ll have other possibilities and now we’re closing one door and opening another“. The Maglia Ciclamino looks positively towards the future, which then delves into the analysis of the ending not hiding bitterness and attacking, after being pressed a lot, the teams of the other sprinters: “I have a lot to say about this, but let’s let the images do the talking. We absolutely deployed the whole team, we perhaps lacked a bit of help at the end“.
“If maybe someone had arrived earlier we might have been able to close – it’s the stab that Milan finally pulls out -. Everyone knew up front that there were some great long distance riders, some great runners, so in short we had to do it first“. Final consideration on the fact of being considered the strongest sprinter of the Giro: “I wouldn’t say stronger, there are many other strong sprinters here, but we need to organize ourselves!”. In short, there are regrets and they have all come to the surface. Looking beyond today’s single result, the positive thing is that the leg is absolutely the best, and there will be no shortage of opportunities between here and Rome.
