The Giro d’Italia is not finished making sparks under the hot Ligurian sun.  The 5th stage proved to be again very difficult with the ride through the beautiful scenery surrounding Cinque Terre.  It is unlikely that many riders had time to enjoy the views given the speed imposed by the Astana team and the severity of the terrain. 

This did not stop Davide Formolo (Cannondale-Garmin) from taking an excellent solo victory after having spent the day in the breakaway.  And then Simon Clarke (Orica GreenEDGE) took second on the stage, which gave him the pink jersey after his teammate Michael Matthews was unable to keep up with the leaders over the hilly course. 

IAM Cycling found themselves in a similar position, since one by one the riders from the team were shelled from the lead group throughout this demanding day.  Best finisher from the Swiss squad proved to be Sébastien Reichenbach who arrived in a group of 10 riders, 13’15” in arears. 

For his first participation in the Giro, Sylvain Chavanel has found the conditions amazing, to say the least.  The multiple time trial champion of France remains serene in anticipation of the first summit finish at Abetone. 

“I’m not disappointed.  I have rarely seen this in the first week of a grand tour.  It is like this every day and everyone is being thrashed.  I tried to escape twice today, but neither time was I allowed enough of a gap.  Since I saw I wasn’t going to be allowed to accomplish anything amazing, I settled into the gruppetto.  If I want to race the Giro and the Tour de France, I will need to spare the horses a little at least.  But I can see that I have some more work to do in order to be fit enough to show myself more.”

Rubens Bertogliati, directeur sportif along with Kjell Carlström, once again stayed just in front of the broom wagon in order to accompany Matteo Pelucchi through his stations of the cross. 

“We have established a system to help Matteo survive these first very difficult stages.  Aleksejs Saramotins is charged with watching out for him and helping Matteo to make sure he stays within the time limit during these mountainous days, hoping that his painful ankle will recover.  And it was not easy at all today because we could not exceed 11% of the winning time.  We are here to calculate the time and encourage the guys.  We also found help from some other teams who were also interested in avoiding having their riders eliminated.  It all came together so we were able to arrive on time.”