Shortened by 2.1km in order to avoid the strong winds atop Sassotetto, stage 5 of Tirreno-Adriatico Crédit Agricole delivered the same winner as stage 4 and this time Primoz Roglic also moved on to the race lead thanks to the time bonus, taking over from Lennard Kämna who also made the front group of seventeen riders after lone attacker Damiano Caruso was brought back with 700 metres to go. Roglic outsprinted Giulio Ciccone while Tao Geoghegan Hart rounded out the stage podium before three riders from Bora-Hansgrohe: Jai Hindley, Lennard Kämna and Alexandr Vlasov. Roglic took three leaders’ jerseys with the points classification and KOM leads in addition to the overall.
Speaking in the press conference, the stage winner and new Maglia Azzurra Primoz Roglic, said:“It’s crazy to get another win after yesterday but it’s really cool and I’m having fun! There were gusts of wind already in the valley, then also in the climb. But it’s the only pro that came to completion in Europe today. I had some hard time up that hill which was a much bigger one than yesterday but at the end, we saw the possibility of a sprint finished. I asked Wilco [Kelderman] to pull together and get us a chance to go for the stage win. With two stage wins, I already achieved more than I expected before coming to Tirreno-Adriatico. But one of the reasons for adding this to my program was to do one more race with some of the riders who will stand by my side at the Giro, Wilco, Koen [Bouwman]… With these guys, we’ll do our best to defend the jersey tomorrow”.
