A simply unbelievable stage! Giro D'Italia stage 5 reaction

In what on paper didn't seem like a stage that promised to deliver too much drama the Giro d'Italia was once again at its unpredictable best as Igor Arrieta took the stage despite crashing and also going the wrong way with 2km, somehow closing down a near 20-second gap to Afonso Eulalio in the final 2km to beat him in the sprint and take the first win of his career in quite inexplicable fashion.

In torrential rain in southern Italy, the break of the day took a while to go, but when it did, it was a strong group comprising many really strong riders with Victor Campenaerts and yesterday's stage winner Jhonathan Narvaez up the road. Then the race just stayed fairly neutralised, with the gap to the peloton never really going above two and a half minutes over the first 140km of the stage. This changed in the run-in to the final climb of the day, where Igor Arrieta made his move, attacking off the front of the breakaway before the day's major climb even started. This allowed him to tempo up the climb, and the only other rider in the breakaway who managed to bridge across was Afonso Eulalio, meaning when they crested the final categorised climb with 50km to go, it was just these two and another group of four riders including Christian Scaroni ahead of the peloton who had reduced the gap to the front to just over 2 minutes, mainly down to the work of Red Bull Bora-Hansgrohe.

However, once the peloton got over the final climb, Red-Bull stopped riding, confusing many as to why they were riding on the front in the first place, given they clearly harboured no ambition to win the stage, and with the first major mountain day in a couple of days, wasting resources for seemingly no reason feels a very strange decision. This meant the gap ballooned from then on, with the peloton finishing over 7 minutes behind the winner

This might not seem like one of the highest drama stages in recent memory at this point, but all the drama was packed into the final 15km, where first Arrieta fell on a sharp left-hand corner going down fairly hard and having to change his bike, meaning he lost just over 30 seconds to Eulalio who looked to be cruising to victory till he also fell in what looked a much heavier crash for him and like Arrieta he also had change bike meaning they were back together with just over 6km to go where Arrieta sat on Eulalio's wheel until with 2km to go a sharp right hand corner which Arrieta evidently had not reconed in the build up caught him out meaning he went straight on rather than the intended right into some tape. While he didn't come off his bike, he still lost just under 20 seconds and with 2km to go, the stage once again looked to be heading Eulalio's way, but Arrieta somehow found another gear, and Eulalio's legs caught up to him, meaning the Spaniard was able to catch the Portuguese with 150m to go and the sprint was no contest as Eulalio simply had nothing to give handing UAE team emirates their second win in as many days to complete a ridiculous turnaround from three of their eight riders being forced to abandon the race after a huge crash on stage 2.

It was not all bad for Eulalio, though, as he is now in pink as the leader of the overall race, given how large a gap he and Arrieta were able to create over the peloton, he now leads by 2 minutes 51 seconds on Arrieta, with over 6 minutes to the main group of favourites, which on paper he shouldn't be able hold till rome given the parcour coming up but he has given himself a chance especially as tommorow seems like a nailed on sprint stage giving him time to recover before the first big mountain of the race on Friday.