"To help the captain is my job and today I know I did my best."

Those were the words of Astana's Mikel Landa after stage five of the Giro d'Italia. Landa made an impressive work for Fabio Aru over the last 5km of the climb to Abetone.

Thanks to the work of his teammate Aru managed to arrive in third position 1m and 31s behind the stage winner Jan Polanc of Slovenia.

Aru is now the leader of the youth classification wearing the white jersey. Aru is also in second position in the general classification only 2 seconds behind the new leader Alberto Contador of Spain.

Dario Cataldo and Landa are both in the Top Ten of overall classification, while Astana Pro Team is leading the team ranking.

“I’m happy,” Aru said. “It was a real battle and it was great for the public and the tifosi to see a battle between such great champions, and to find myself in the midst of all of that was a great emotion. I’ve worked so hard for so long for this, and I’m happy. My team was exceptional again. Landa in the finale especially, he really outdid himself, and I can only congratulate him.”

“It already started on Saturday with the team time trial. You saw yesterday and the other day and again today, it’s been a lot of spettacolo on the climbs and the climbs. Contador and Porte are great riders, who have proved their ability by winning some big races. I’m here to do as well as I can. We’ll see how well I can do but I’ve got a lot of respect for them.”