"It was a pretty complicated stage today" - Caleb Ewan joins those in peloton critical of Alpecin-Deceuninck tactics on stage 5 of Giro d'Italia
CyclingWednesday, 08 May 2024 at 22:00
Despite being the second-fastest sprinter in the race for the line on stage 5 at the 2024 Giro d'Italia, Caleb Ewan was forced to settle for 6th place on the day as the breakaway narrowly held on.
"It was a pretty complicated stage today," the Aussie sprint star reflected in his post-stage interview with the official social media pages of Team Jayco AlUla. "Alpecin-Deceuninck went full gas on the climb in the middle and made it quite hard, but they sat up afterwards and that a new breakaway go, not too far from the finish."
That second breakaway ended up being the one to take the spoils too as Cofidis' Benjamin Thomas edged out EF Education-EasyPost's Michael Valgren to take the win on the stage, ending his team's long wait for victory in 2024 in the process.
Ewan, like many in the peloton however, has been left questioning Alpecin-Deceuninck's tactics. "When you have a fresh group of strong guys go that close to the finish, it's always going to be hard to bring back. Our boys did all they could to try and bring it back but in the end, it wasn't enough," Ewan concludes. "It was good to do a sprint today but it would have been nicer sprinting for the win."
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- It would have been also interesting to find out Dumoulin's opinion in this regard about Pog doing Giro and the Tour last year, especially considering that, powerwise, Pog's best results came during the last third of the Tour.
raven21-06-2025 - Friendly = raising white flag? Wow, I never know that. /s I don't know why he complained about the way Vingo raced. That was one of the most aggressive version of Vingo. He attacked on the a sprint stage and went all out of the hilly stages, albeit not being able to beat Pogi there. How is that considered raising white flag?
KerisVroom20-06-2025 - Pidcock has always come across as arrogant and not particularly smart. I’m not surprised that he, his team, and their sponsor would do something like this—and to top it off, they released the video on the anniversary of Gino’s tragic death.
UltimateOpportunist20-06-2025 - It's okay, Chris Froome rumoured 5 mil euro per annum contract comes to an end this year🤞. I doubt anyone wants to sign him as a rider with that salary bracket. I'll be surprised that he still want to ride for another year for anything lesser.KerisVroom20-06-2025
- Jan Christen? Is that guy a team player? Why would you bring in a domestique who doesn't follow the team tactics to the biggest race of the year?KerisVroom20-06-2025
- If you patronise in the wrong way, you are encouraging people to do whatever it takes, yes. If you throw your money at sport so that money becomes the prime driver for performance, it encourages more cheating, yes. It’s unfortunate but it IS part of the consequences. There are ways to follow the sport without money concentrating where it shouldn’t, just like there are ways and choices for consuming any product. It’s of course an extreme argument, nonetheless, if you want to prevent things going wrong, you need to look ahead to see how that might happen. That includes, how to deal with ideas like One Cycling, Enhanced events. I would guess that cycling took doping a bit more serious after Uknowletsnotnamehim is because they saw the whole story (mediaworthy and ironically therefor potentially money-making) as capable of turning away audiences and probably it did, had it not, they might have just swallowed and waited.Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- More like keyboard police, judge and jury. Next he’ll be telling French people to write Putin and not Poutine ;-)Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- Happy you got that out?Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- As a general rule in evolution, every generation says that about new generations, with so e rare exceptions where you may have to skip one generation. What strikes me with oldies is how many of them grow chubby post cycling, none of the old guys I’ve cycled with are ever chubby. Even Merckx who still rides seems heavy.Mistermaumau20-06-2025
- But he would be a wise man if he used the pre=condition "barring any unforseen event" in his prediction?FredMan20-06-2025
Hey guys, this is getting a bit pathetic, even you Tadej.
You complain when it doesn’t go your way but couldn’t do better than an average outsider team, they didn’t stop you all from hunting down the 2nd breakaway more effectively, or were they blocking your paths?
Also, when Tadej messes with your « sprinter » stage, none of you say much, but now everyone, including Tadej (who had nothing to gain or lose from all this) is ganging up against an easier target?
Agreed. I’d be questioning the tactics of the sprint teams that did bugger all rather than pointing the finger at Alpecin
Wonder if Geraint’s sidekick will join the Alpacin bullying in the next podcast, and what he’ll call them.