Today a short stage of 162 kilometers, the first stage in line of this Giro d'Italia 2010 in Italy, took place between Novara and Novi Ligure.
Jérôme Pineau was part of the leading group of the day which stayed ahead for almost the whole stage and won the sprint of the leading trio just before the peloton could get back on them ...
The resume of the 5th stage of the Tour of Italy 2010: Novara > Novi Ligure
The start of the stage was at 1.17PM at the exit of the city of Novara with 196 riders at the start. This stage was a tribute to Fausto Coppi, 50 years after his dead, and took thus place in his region. The intermediate sprint was in Tortona where Coppi died and the stage passed close to Castellania where the Campionissimo was born.
This was a plain stage with only two small climbs in the second half of the race: Avolasca at 65 kilometers from the finish and Passo Coppi (close to Castellania) at about 50 kilometers from the finish.
After several unsuccessful attempts, the leading group of the day was formed after an attack by the Japanese rider Yukiya Arashiro of the Bbox Bouygues Telecom team. Indeed, he was joined a bit later by the French riders Julien Fouchard (Cofidis, photo) and Jérôme Pineau (Quick Step) and the German rider Paul Voss of Team Milram. These 4 riders got a gap on the peloton which went up to 5'40".
At the intermediate sprint in Tortona, after 76 kilometers, Jérôme Pineau passes the line first, ahead of Fouchard, Arashiro and Voss and only 4'15" later the first rider of the peloton - Wouter Weylandt, winner of the last stage in The Netherlands, arrives at the sprint.
Paul Voss, leader of the King of the Mountains classification, consolidated his position in this classification by arriving first on top of Avolasca, ahead of Arashiro, Pineau and Fouchard. The peloton arrived there with a 3'15" delay. On the top of the second climb of the day, the order in which they arrived was the same and the peloton was 2'58" behind them there.
At the first crossing of the finish line in Novi Ligure, where we could see much less spectators than at the start of this Giro d'Italia 2010 in The Netherlands, the 4 leading riders were still 2'46" ahead of the peloton which was led by the Lampre-Farnese Vini and Garmin-Transitions teams.
This was the third time the Giro d'Italia had a stage finish in Novi Ligure, after 1965 when the stage was won by Danilo Grassi and 1978 with a victory of the Belgian rider Rik van Linden.
The stage was not yet finished though after this first crossing of the finish line, because the riders still had to do a 29.4 kilometer circuit around the finish city, passing in front of the Museo dei campionissimi, a cycling museum mainly dedicated to Fausto Coppi and Costante Girardengo and for the occasion used as the press room for this stage finish.
On this circuit, the leading group almost immediately lost one of its elements, Paul Voss was exhausted of the effort given so far.
With the HTC-Columbia guys leading the peloton, helped by some riders of Team Milram and Garmin-Transitions, the gap with the leading group was quickly reduced. At 18 kilometers from the finish the leading trio still had a 1'25" gap on the peloton. The collaboration between the three riders continued to work out fine though and at 7 kilometers from the finish they still were one minute ahead. This minute was divided by two however at 5 kilometers from the finish.
Just before they were taken back at the sign of the last kilometer Arashiro accellerated and the two other riders followed him. Jérôme Pineau was the last one to accellerate at 150 meters from the finish and he resisted the comeback of Fouchard, thus winning this 5th stage.
Vincenzo Nibali keeps the pink leader's jersey and offered it to Faustino Coppi so he can put it on the grave of his dad.
1/ Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas) - 14h30'03"
2/ Ivan Basso (Liquigas) - +0'13"
3/ Valerio Agnoli (Liquigas) - +0'20"
4/ Matthew Goss (HTC-Columbia) - +0'26"
5/ André Greipel (HTC-Columbia) - +0'26"
6/ Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana) - +0'33"
7/ Vladimir Karpets (Katusha Team) - +0'39"
8/ Richie Porte (Team Saxo Bank) - +0'45"
9/ David Millar (Garmin-Transitions) - +0'45"
10/ Paolo Tiralongo (Astana) - +0'59"
The classification by points
Thanks to the points he took at the intermediate sprint and to his stage win, Jérôme Pineau takes the lead of the classification by points with the same number of points as Tyler Farrar:
In the King of the Mountains classification, Paul Voss consolidates his leading position thanks to the points he took by arriving first on top of the two climbs of the day:
In the young riders' classification, Michael Morkov (Team Saxo Bank) disappears from the top 5 (for the 8th place) to leave place for Jos van Emden (Rabobank):
1/ Valerio Agnoli (Liquigas-Doimo) - 14h30'23"
2/ Matthew Goss (HTC-Columbia) - +0'06"
3/ Richie Porte (Team Saxo Bank) - +0'25"
4/ Robert Kiserlovski (Liquigas-Doimo) - +1'04"
5/ Tom Stamsnijder (Rabobank) - +1'25" by Thomas Vergouwen
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