20-year-old Valerio Conti is the youngest rider in the Criterium du Dauphiné and has put his great climbing skills on show in the first few stages. Unfortunately, a stupid incident with his radio earpieces took him out of GC contention in today's fifth stage of the race.

Valerio Conti is just 20 years of age and riding his first professional season with Lampre-Merida but he is already mixing it up with the WorldTour stars in the Criterium du Dauphiné. In the first mountain stage, he finished 29th, less than 3 minutes behind Chris Froome, and yesterday he finished with the best riders in the hard stage to Gap.

The youngster was sitting in 28th overall in a race as he went into today's fifth stage Team captain Damiano Cunego is far from his best form and instead it has been Kristijan Durasek and Conti who have taken over the captaincy role.

Unfortunately, the team is now down to just Durasek as Conti fell out of contention due to an unfortunate incident with his radio in today's stage.

"We were on the descent of the Col de la Morte and we were approaching the botoom of the final climb, the Cote de Laffrey, at a very high speed," he said. "There were about 30km to the finish. I stood up in the pedals when my radio earpiece fell out of my ears and got caught up in my wheels. 

"Luckily I did not crash, but I had to stop to untangle the wire, thus wasting time and having to say goodbye to the group of the best. I tried to go back, but it was impossible."

Lampre-Merida had more bad luck as Winner Anacona had to abandon due to the injuries he suffered in a crash on stage 3. Luckily, Kristijan Durasek managed to keep up with the best and he is still sitting in the top 20 of the overall standings.