He had tried on the arrival ramp in Caltagirone and had been reassembled in the final meters by Tim Wellens. Enrico Battaglin was not discouraged and tried again yesterday in Santa Ninfa in an almost identical finish to Tuesday's and achieved his third victory in the Giro after those in Serra San Bruno in 2013 and Oropa in 2014, ahead of Giovanni Visconti and the Portuguese Gonçalves.
The fifth stage took the Giro to the Belice valley, through territories that still today show the wounds of the terrible earthquake of 1968, with the Grande Cretto, the gigantic land art work by Alberto Burri, to remember Gibellina, one that does not exist more. The Giro has always offered emotions. And Sicily, due to its more than thousand-year history, has already offered many in these first two days.
And today should reserve many, not only landscapes, also in terms of the fight for the pink jersey, always on the shoulders of Rohan Dennis tailed by Tom Dumoulin just a second away. There is the stage on Etna, a fraction awaited by the Giro to give more convincing report cards to its protagonists.
All the pretenders to the final victory are under observation, even those like Tom Dumoulin who didn't miss a beat in this start of the Giro, trimming significant gaps on their rivals if we consider that last year's edition saw the first three finishers (Dumoulin , Quintana and Nibali) collected in just 40 seconds.
The ascent to the volcano, with its steep slopes in an impressive alternation of green of the woods and black of the lava flow, will not elect the winner of the pink race, but it will be able to make the first exit polls on who is starting to lose it. Under the magnifying glass, among those who have disappointed so far, it is above all Chris Froome who in the first five stages has appeared very far from Froome who dominates the Tour.
The Briton returned to the Giro to win it, certainly not to make the foolish impression of his compatriot Bradley Wiggins, super favorite in 2013, who gave up in the middle of the race, afraid of crashing in the rain, like an amateur in jeopardy. The fall of Jerusalem, like the affair of albuterol which involves him, may have conditioned him.
With a delay of almost a minute from Dumoulin, the Briton, if he loses more ground, would give a strongly bearish signal to his Giro. Even Fabio Aru can no longer escape a test as leader after a dull start, penalized by the Sardinian's poor feeling for races against the clock.
Another one who will have to say he is there today is the Colombian Miguel Angel Lopez, the strongest climber of the Giro, one of the great favorites for the victory on top of the 1736 meters of the Astrophysical Observatory of Etna, disastrous in this start of the race also marked yesterday from the umpteenth crash that made him lose another 43” from the best, an unexpected forehand in a meadow that made him slip almost 2 minutes behind Dennis' pink jersey. Pinot, Pozzovivo and Yates, on the other hand, are expected to confirm the brilliant sensations given in this first quarter of the Giro.
