Davide Ballerini won stage six of the Giro d\u2019Italia as a crash on the cobbles took out several sprint specialists near the finish in Naples on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Italian Ballerini (XDS Astana Team) comfortably beat Belgium\u2019s Jasper Stuyven (Soudal Quick-Step) on the city centre finish after a flat 142km ride from Paestum.<\/p>\n
A relatively incident-free stage burst into life in the final kilometres as the sprinters moved into position. But with light rain making the surface treacherous, a crash inside the final kilometre took down Jonathan Milan (Lidl-Trek), Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet Rose Rockets) and several other riders.<\/p>\n
A disappointed Milan questioned the choice of route. \u201cI don\u2019t know why we have to find these complicated finishes, why can\u2019t we go just straight,\u201d he said. \u201cWith two drops of water you get a huge mess. I\u2019m disappointed as I was in a good position.\u201c<\/p>\n
Groenewegen was more measured. \u201cIt was a bit slippery and it can happen,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s disappointing. Sometimes you have bad luck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ballerini and Stuyven managed to avoid the chaos and powered to the line with Ballerini proving too strong. France\u2019s Paul Magnier was third. \u201cI was thinking to win one stage in the Giro but today was not actually on the plan,\u201d the 31-year-old Ballerini said. \u201cBut when the crash happened I saw a gap and I made it.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a relaxing day for the general classification contenders, the battle will resume on Friday with Portugal\u2019s Afonso Eul\u00e1lio (Bahrain Victorious) still in the pink jersey with a two-minute, 51-second lead over Spain\u2019s Igor Arrieta (UAE Team Emirates XRG) after they finished safely in the bunch.<\/p>\n
Stage seven from Formia is one of the toughest on this year\u2019s Giro, with a 244km route ending with a 13.6km climb to the Blockhaus mountain in the Apennines. Friday\u2019s stage could see the first big move from race favourite Jonas Vingegaard, who is currently 15th, six minutes behind surprise leader Eul\u00e1lio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Davide Ballerini won stage six of the Giro d\u2019Italia as a crash on the cobbles took out several…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-583988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}