Carlos Barbero finished second for Caja Rural-Seguros RGA in the 5th stage of the Tour of Turkey. Furthermore, two other riders from the team finished in the top 10: Eduard Prades in 7th and Pello Bilbao in 10th. Lluis Mas has managed to increase his lead in the sprints competition and leads by 5 points.

Josemi Fernandez, team manager, said after the stage: "The balance is not bad, but it is not good either. We have tried, and we were very close, but we are striving to achieve a stage win and we will see if it works out next time. The team is in good shape and will continue to seek victory."

"It was a hard stage, with plenty of wind and lots of hard climbing, so everyone arrived at the sprint at the limits of their powers," Barbero said. "I was strong, although I lost to Modolo by a small margin. It’s a good result: the standard is very high here, with the best sprinters in the world, so a second place here really means something. Cavendish probably found all the climbing hard, which opened the stage up a bit, and I gave it everything.

"We were close and the level is high. At least I have been consistent since my 4th place in La Rioja. I've been in front in every race and we have to value that."

"It has been a good day for the team," Mas said. "We worked really hard to bring the peloton up to the breakaway so that I could try my hand in the sprint of the day, 20km from the stage finish. I won it, so I couldn’t have asked for more. But we didn’t stop there. In the final kilometres, we concentrated on putting our sprinter Carlos Barbero in a good position, and he achieved an excellent 2nd place."