The Giro is getting colder and wetter, every day it rains in torrents and single-digit temperatures in this May that tastes like November even in the stages that point to the South. Tom Dumoulin victim of a disastrous fall on the outskirts of Frascati which had plunged him to the bottom of the standings. The Dutchman, great favorite with Roglic, Nibali and Yates for the final victory, tried to stay in the race by appearing at the start of the fifth stage from Frascati to Terracina but the pain in his knee prevented him from pedaling. So even before the starter gave the official start, the Dutch champion, winner of the 2017 Giro and second last year behind the extraordinary Froome from Colle delle Finestre, threw in the towel. He will have plenty of time to get back in shape to present himself among the favorites in the next Tour. The Giro loses one of its great protagonists on another day marked by bad weather, with the caravan lashed by wind and water, on high-speed roads of pitfalls so as to induce the organizers to fix the race times at nine km from the finish to avoid the risk of falls in the final tussle on the street circuit.
Roglic on the fifth day of the pink jersey and the other big names, at the 131 km signal, pulled the oars into the boat, happy to be soaked but safe under the downpour that was raging on the race. For the sprinters, the crazy final began in view of a thrilling sprint due to the reduced visibility and the puddles that hid the road depressions. The first to give up the risks of the last thousand meters was Viviani, the Italian champion who seems to have lost some certainty after the relegation suffered by the jury in Orbetello.
His team from this Giro is fighting for victory by accepting the risk of a crazy sprint: Pascal Ackermann wins, burning Fernando Gaviria and Dèmare by a few centimetres, the German from Bora-Hansgrohe who repeats Fucecchio's success. Fourth is Caleb Ewan, fifth Matteo Moschetti, a sprinter of the latest generation – he is only 23 years old – who in this Giro is cutting his teeth by dueling with the most titled colleagues. Waiting for the first Italian victory, Germany is the first nation to do an encore in this start of the Giro. For Ackermann, the Terracina sprint is another important step towards joining the exclusive club of the strongest sprinters around. His second victory at the Giro is the 37th for Germany which has André Greipel as the record holder for pink victories with 7 victories, followed with 4 by Marcel Kittel – who has long been out of major racing – and Rudy Altig, world champion at the Nurburgring at the times of Eddy Merckx, the Belgian cannibal who took one of his 1969 victories at the Giro in 22 in Terracina.
It was the year in which, a few days later, the Savona yellow exploded with Merckx already in the pink jersey and absolute ruler of the race who was expelled from the competition for a doping case that still causes discussion and which he found at the time in Indro Montanelli the staunchest believer in the Belgian's innocence. Doping whose disturbing shadows have once again lengthened also on this Giro causing Bahrain-Merida, Nibali's team, to suspend Kristijan Korel involved in the "Operation Aderlass", a story of prohibited practices at the center of which the Austrian judiciary has placed the doctor Marc Schmidt with his patients, some active see Korel and Kristijan Durasek – also stopped by the UAE Emirates Team while he was racing the Tour of California – and other former riders such as the Slovenian Borut Bozic and the Italian Alessandro Petacchi , a top sprinter, today a Rai collaborator at the Giro, an activity from which he was suspended as a precaution.
