DISCUSSION Giro d'Italia stage 6 | Crashes and neutralization in the rain, Wout van Aert's late attack and Kaden Groves' win

Stage 6 of the Giro d'Italia was the most hectic and chaotic one of this edition so far. A ferocious fight for the breakaway that promised a strong group going together able to contest the tyranny of sprinters but that ended up in just two riders, a rainy day with slippery roads that saw a massive crash with just 50km to go, three DNF (that might be many more tomorrow), a polemical jury decision and Kaden Groves reigning in chaos.

Once the heartbeats have slowed down after such a turbulent day, we have asked some of our writers about their opinions and thoughts on today's events:

About today's stage there's one main topic to discuss: The crash! As for the why? I feel like it's one of those inevitabilities in the peloton. Downhill section, slippery roads due to the rain. The peloton wasn't even riding on high intensity as the break was short in numbers and safely controlled, but a fall right in front of the peloton is deemed to affect a lot of people.

I remember seeing some guy in the back of the peloton who was just braking to avoid hitting the others, and ended up crashing himself to the side. Maybe this might eventually spark the debate that under this sort of conditions the riders must be obliged to use harder tyres that would increase the grip levels, but I think there will be a long road until actions are taken in this direction.

As for the decision to neutralize, I can accept that based on prioritizing the safety of the riders. From what I understood Primoz Roglic was the guy who represented the peloton in conversations with the race organizers so he must have certainly spoken on behalf of a large quantity of teams for this action to be taken. From a spectator side obviously this was quite anti-climatic and the stage lost any sort of interest it could have.

As for the winner itself, it's hard to tell if he was the better man for the day because a guy like Mads Pedersen imediatelly put himself out of contention when the neutralization was also applied for the finish line points, showing his true goal is to win the Maglia Ciclamino.

Overall, an unfortunate and anti-climatic stage that i feel like everyone will just want to forget.

P.S.: Also double unfortune for Red Bull to lose Hindley here and also lose 3 guys in Hungary nearly at the same time, doesn't feel like they were running their best Red Bull Kms today (pun intended).

A long stage, and I'm happy to have finally seen an actual fight for the breakaway. It remains nice to see INEOS Grenadiers' new behaviour, and be a team that actually tries to disrupt the expected outcome of races - something I've honestly been very disappointed with in the first 5 stages of the race.

I think they did bad though bringing back the group that had Tarling, seeing how the finale played out, a slightly bigger group could've actually taken the win. Now the crash... With some rain, it was bound to happen eventually. Always sad, and here it wasn't about positioning or anything, it was bad luck - although Roglic can be happy he avoided it, as it happened directly behind him.

BORA do not have Martínez in good form and have now lost Hindley, which is very bad news for them when the race enters the Alps next week. UAE will have the upper hand, with no doubt. This crash does have a big impact in the race, as did the one on stage 1, and was the highlight of the day. Richard Carapaz was also not too well, and I sense he may have a bad day tomorrow.

In the finale we saw Visma doing too much work I think, Alpecin took advantage of that and then put everyone under pressure with that late attack... Under pressure, Wout van Aert went for it instead of focusing on the leadout. Olav Kooij was completely blocked in the sprint and it was a lost day for a team that worked so much...

Kaden Groves was the absolute fastest and I think it would've been hard in any circumstance for him to have been beaten. He was head and shoulders faster than the rest, and I think no-one can be angry for having missed out on the win here.

No GC times was understandable, although frankly there was no need, the neutralization happened because of the chaos at the moment of the crash. The lack of points for the points classification at the finish line was senseless in my opinion. It was a bunch sprint without the leader of the classification that all these riders would be competing for, which is silly!

Very controversial decision by the judges once again. Of course, the safety of the riders is (or should be) the priority, and I can understand that the judges considered that the state of the roads at that moment, added to the weather situation and the massive fall that affected a good part of the group, prevented the race from continuing as if nothing had happened.

However, I don't understand the final decision: the times for the GC don't count, the Red Bull kilometer doesn't count, no points for the Maglia Ciclamino at the finish, no OTL... but there is a stage victory. In other words, the commissaires didn't think there was enough danger to cancel the stage, but they did cancel the GC times.

The riders fighting for the stage in a mass sprint were not in danger but those going for the general classification were? What is the point of not awarding points for the Maglia Ciclamino when there is a bunch sprint in the end? If the stage win could be contested, I don’t think there is any reason for GC times not counting. You can either ride or not to ride, there shouldn’t be an in-between.

As Javier Ares said in Eurosport during the race, this decision is just a conservative one that ensures nobody complains within the peloton. GC riders will be happy without having to fight to stay in peloton and take risks, while sprinters will be happy having the chance of fighting for the win.

Solomonic decision that avoids cancellation of the stage as well, pleasing sponsors and the city of Napoli, which had probably paid a nice sum of money to host today’s finish.

I've seen heated discussions of whether Moschetti should/shouldn't be relegated in today's sprint, but ultimately I side with the race jury's decision to declassify the Q36.5 sprinter. Yet here the praise ends.

Two days ago, we recall that Kanter was relegated allegedly for shouldering with pink jersey Pedersen. One thing is that if they were to apply such rule consistently, we'd have to relegate half of the sprinters every stage. The other is that the actual dangerous move - Kanter chopping an Alpecin rider while exchanging blows with Pedersen - was completely missed.

That brings me to today when Kanter was nearly crashed by Tudor rider (Zijlaard) who swerved together with Moschetti. Jury likes to justify that he's "just following" and therefore issues no punishment.

Zijlaard was at no point forced to go left and endanger other riders, yet he did. He's just lucky Kanter had enough space on his left to brush off the contact... I think jury continues to forget their job isn't to only punish what is showed repeatedly on the TV...  

The start of the stage had me excited, with some attacks that looked serious. In the end, only two men got away. And what tough fugitives they were. There were more than 200 kilometres on the run.

A fall marked the day. Many men on the ground, some important lads crashed. We'll see what physical consequences the next few days will have on the course of the race.

If there hadn't been the crash, it would have been another monotonous, unsavoury stage. Why did they increase the number of teams in the Grand Tours? After all, the competitiveness is the same. It was 227 boring kilometres of racing. Very, very bad.