Leonardo Duque and Peter Sagan in the uphill sprint won by Caleb Ewan
Colombia-Coldeportes lived a day without upsets in Vuelta a Espana stage 5, 167 flat kilometres from Rota and Alcalà de Guadaira with the final 500 metres pointing up to sort the sprinters’ legs and energies. The peloton easily controlled a three man breakaway, eventually caught with 15 km to the finish where Australian youngster Caleb Ewan (Orica-GreenEDGE) surprised everyone with his winning acceleration in the last 150 metres, leaving favorites John Degenkolb (Giant-Alpecin) and Peter Sagan (Tinkoff-Saxo) empty handed. The final sprint created small gaps inside the peloton, but just enough for Tom Dumoulin (Giant-Alpecin) to take the leader’s jersey off the shoulders of Colombian Esteban Chaves (Orica-GreenEDGE).
Leonardo Duque took charge of the final sprint for the Escarabajos, finishing 14th at 2 seconds. Rodolfo Torres was 38th at 16 seconds, moving two positions up in the overall standings to 35th, 3.15 behind new leader Dumoulin.
In a stage clearly poised to be one for the sprinters, looking to make the best of the few chances they will have in this Vuelta, Tsgabu Grmay (Lampre-Merida), Iljo Keisse (Etixx-Quickstep) and Antoine Duchesne (Europcar) animated the day with their escape, opening a 7.20 maximum advantage, but were kept in check by the peloton led by Tinkoff-Saxo and Giant-Alpecin.
General Manager Claudio Corti expressed his thoughts after the first five stages of the race: “The early stages of a grand tour are always complicated, particularly for riders like ours who need to come to terms with the frantic pace in the World Tour peloton, including some of the top riders in the World. In these days, we wanted to be aggressive and show up when possible: today, we opted to save energies ahead of the upcoming two stages, where we hope to be in the thick of the action both from distance and in the stage finale. Our Vuelta a Espana will be a crescendo.“
Tomorrow, Thursday, will bring the first of two uphill finishes in a row: in the6th stage, Cordoba-Sierra de Cazorla (200 km), the riders will have to face Alto de Baeza before tackling the final, 3 km drag to the Alto de Cazorla.
Alcalà de Guadaira (Spain), August 26th, 2015
