{"id":671347,"date":"2026-05-14T23:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/671347\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T23:05:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T23:05:14","slug":"jensen-plowright-avoids-late-crash-to-finish-fourth-on-giro-ditalia-stage-six-davide-ballerini-claims-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/671347\/","title":{"rendered":"Jensen Plowright avoids late crash to finish fourth on Giro d’Italia stage six, Davide Ballerini claims win"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australian Jensen Plowright laughed off his own “Steven Bradbury moment” as he avoided a late crash to claim fourth on stage six of the Giro d’Italia.<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old skipped past the late carnage on the Napoli cobbles to sprint to his best finishing position in a grand tour stage.<\/p>\n

Davide Ballerini (XDS Astana) claimed victory ahead of Jasper Stuyven (Soudal Quick-Step), with Paul Magnier (Soudal Quick-Step) just pipping Plowright to third.<\/p>\n

All the major favourites, despite being caught behind the crash, lost no time on general classification.<\/p>\n

“Yeah, I had a bit of a Steven Bradbury<\/a> moment,” Plowright told Cycling Pro Net.<\/p>\n

“I was right at the back and managed to just finesse my way around the corner.<\/p>\n

“Fourth is nice.”<\/p>\n

\"Jasper<\/p>\n

Jasper Stuyven (left) just couldn’t get past Italian stage winner Davide Ballerini. (Getty Images: Dario Belingheri)<\/p>\n

Plowright (Alpecin-Premier Tech) came into the Giro as part of Kaden Groves’s sprint train, but since his fellow Aussie’s withdrawal<\/a>, he has been allowed to seek his own opportunities.<\/p>\n

The opportunity was always likely to arise on the flat 142-kilometre ride from Paestum to Napoli, a stage always destined to end in a sprint.<\/p>\n

Such was the pre-determined nature of the stage ending in a sprint, it took a while for Edward Planckaert and Luca Vergallito (Alpecin-Deceuninck) to reluctantly build a breakaway, later being joined by Martin Marcellusi, Manuele Tarozzi (VF Group Bardiani-CSF Faizan\u00e8) and Mattia Bais (Polti VisitMalta).<\/p>\n

They were reeled in more than 30km before the finish by a relaxed peloton.<\/p>\n

However, that was not to last, with rain falling in Napoli to make the technical closing kilometres on the cobbles of the Piazza del Plebiscito an anxiety-filled battle for the sprinters.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know why we have to find these complicated finishes, why can’t we go just straight,” Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek) said.<\/p>\n

“With two drops of water you get a huge mess. I’m disappointed as I was in a good position.”<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan<\/p>\n

Jonathan Milan was not impressed with the finale. (Getty Images: Dario Belingheri)<\/p>\n

Dylan Groenewegen, whose Unibet Rose Rockets team had done all the work to put their man in the best position possible, was more circumspect.<\/p>\n

“It was a bit slippery and it can happen,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It’s disappointing. Sometimes you have bad luck.”<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

There was no bad luck for race leader Afonso Eul\u00e1lio (Bahrain Victorious), who safely held onto the Maglia Rosa ahead of what promises to be an explosive finale on Friday.<\/p>\n

Riders will head into the high mountains for the first time on this year’s race, ending on the storied Apennine climb to Blockhaus, where Jai Hindley claimed a heroic stage victory in 2022<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I think it will be the first real true test,” he told Red Bull-BORA-hansgrohe’s website before the Giro got underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There will definitely be gaps. I don’t think the race will be decided there, but we’ll get a good idea of who’s in form.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australian Jensen Plowright laughed off his own “Steven Bradbury moment” as he avoided a late crash to claim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,784,163619,314682,318322,85],"class_list":["post-671347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-giro-ditalia","tag-grand-tour","tag-pink-jersey","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}