The 5th stage of the Giro d'Italia 2011 was mainly characterised by a solo raid by Martin Kohler (BMC Racing Team) and than by the dirt roads which allowed Pieter Weening (Rabobank) and John Gadret (AG2R La Mondiale) to get back on the Swiss rider and for the Dutch rider to finally win the stage and take over the pink jersey!
When Tom Jelte Slagter (Rabobank) fell this recalled the sad event which happened on Monday but the young rider fortunately got out it quite well.

The summary of the 5th stage of the Tour of Italy 2011: Piombino > Orvieto

191 kilometers seperated today the finish in Orvieto from the start in Piombino. During these 191 kilometers the race again took over from the dramatic event last Monday. Not always easily because the riders who are still in this Giro d'Italia 2011 were all marked by the death of Wouter Weylandt.

During this stage, the riders did no less than 19 kilometers on the strade bianchi or tratto sterrato in the last 40 kilometers of the race. The use of these dirt roads which gave a very nice stage to watch during the Giro last year now almost looked inhuman.

In the 12th kilometer a Swiss rider, Martin Kohler (BMC Racing Team), already decided to go away and start a solo escape. His gap on the peloton quickly went up, up to 12'10" after 44 kilometers. The peloton didn't really seem to worry about him because he only really started losing time on the still 6 minutes which remained when he arrived on the dirt roads. His back wheel continuously slipped away and he thus had some difficulties to stay ahead. Yaroslav Popovych (Team Radioshack) is the first rider to start the pursuit, without success. Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas-Cannondale) than attacks in one of the descents on the dirt roads and he gets company by many other riders. Only Bram Tankink (Rabobank) and Dario Cataldo (Quick Step) finally stay ahead but when the last mentioned rider falls in a turn and when Tankink drops his chain, their attack also ends there.

Tom Jelte Slagter (Rabobank) than falls in quite a spectacular way after having touched a soigneur of the Euskaltel-Euskadi team on the side of the road (he seems to have thought the orange shirt of this man of the team from Basque country was the orange of his team) and the images which followed of course recalled the memories of the dramatic fall on Monday. The Dutch rider is taken to the hospital and turns out to have a broken eye socket and a concussion. His team announces that no brain damage has been detected.

When Pieter Weening (Rabobank) and John Gadret (AG2R La Mondiale) than start Kohler's pursuit that finally turns out to be the right one and they rapidly get back on the Swiss rider. Pieter Weening decides to accelerate once more and go get the stage win.

In the final kilometer, David Arroyo (Movistar Team) still tries to get back on him but he doesn't succeed in this attempt. Weening not only wins the stage but also takes over the pink jersey of David Millar (Team Garmin-Cervélo).

This is the very first Dutch stage victory and first Dutch pink jersey since Jeroen Blijlevens in 1999!

Pieter Weening's comments

The winner of this stage and new pink jersey, Pieter Weening, announced after his win not to see this as the most important win of his career. It's one of the highlights of my career. The victory in the 8th stage in Gérardmer in the Tour de France in 2005 still is the most important highlight for me. This is great, more than great actually. But a Tour stage is still more important for me. However, the pink jersey makes this even more complete of course.

For a Grand Tour like this you always hope to get a good result. You dream about winning a stage but there are almost 200 other riders who do the same.

I'll now see how things go every day. Maybe I can keep the jersey for another day. That would be great. But this Giro is already a success for me. I can now continue without any pressure and we'll see how that works out.

Never number 108 any more

The organiser of the Giro today announced that the 108 will never be used any more in the Tour of Italy. Wouter Weylandt was wearing this number when he made his fatal crash.

The summary of the 5th stage in video

The classifications of the 5th stage of the Giro d'Italia 2011

The classification of the 5th stage: Piombino > Orvieto

The top 5 of the 5th stage of the Giro d'Italia 2011 is as follows:

1/ Pieter Weening (Rabobank) - 4h54'49"
2/ Fabio Duarte (Team Geox-TMC) - +0'08"
3/ José Serpa (Androni Giocattoli-C.I.P.I.)
4/ Christophe Le Mével (Team Garmin-Cervélo)
5/ Oscar Gatto (Farnese Vini-Neri Sottoli)

The general classification after the 5th stage of the Giro d'Italia 2011

The top 5 of the general classification of the Tour of Italy is as follows after the 5th stage:

1/ Pieter Weening (Rabobank) - 14h59'33"
2/ Marco Pinotti (Team HTC-Highroad) - +0'02"
3/ Kanstantsin Sivtsov (Team HTC-Highroad)
4/ Christophe Le Mével (Team Garmin-Cervélo) - +0'05"
5/ Pablo Lastras (Movistar Team) - +0'22"

Points classification

In the points classification we find Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-ISD) leading, mainly after his stage win in the second stage.

1/ Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-ISD) - 28 points
2/ Christophe Le Mével (Team Garmin-Cervélo) - 26
3/ Pieter Weening (Rabobank) - 25
4/ Angeli Viciosi (Androni Giocattoli-C.I.P.I.) - 25
5/ Fabio Duarte (Team Geox-TMC) - 20

King of the Mountains classification

After his long solo escape and by getting on top of the two 3rd category climbs of the day alone and first, Martin Kohler (BMC Racing Team) took over the King of the Mountains jersey:

1/ Martin Kohler (BMC Racing Team) - 10 points
2/ Gianluca Brambilla (Colnago-CSF Inox) - 8
3/ Christophe Le Mével (Team Garmin-Cervélo) - 5
4/ Roman Kreuziger (Astana) - 3
5/ Sebastian Lang (Omega Pharma-Lotto) - 3

Beste young rider

The white jersey of best young rider also gets on the shoulders of another rider, again a Dutch rider of the Rabobank team:

1/ Steven Kruijswijk (Rabobank) - 15h00'01"
2/ Fabio Duarte (Team Geox-TMC) - +0'15"
3/ Peter Kennaugh (Team Sky) - +0'22"
4/ Roman Kreuziger (Astana) - +0'24"
5/ Robert Kiserlovski (Astana)

door Thomas Vergouwen
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this publication is published in: Giro d Italia | Giro d'Italia 2011

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