Jose De Cauwer - "Yesterday was already a stressful day for Soudal-Quick Step and today will make Remco nervous"

It seems as if the world and his dog (no pun intended) has had an opinion on the multiple crashes of Remco Evenepoel on stage 5 at the Giro d'Italia. Sporza analyst Jose De Cauwer is no different.

"You don't expect it in the south of Italy. You think 'gloria hallelujah, the sun is shining here'. That is not always true," De Cauwer says to Karl Vannieuwkerke for Sporza about the horrible weather conditions seen on the course yesterday. "Yesterday was already a stressful day for Soudal-Quick Step and today will make Remco nervous. You can say it doesn't affect him, but that's not true."

Whilst indeed one of the Soudal - Quick-Step leader's crashes was arguably in relation to the weather, the first of his two crashes was caused by a dog running out into the road. "They must have had a whole day of stress in all the following cars. It all started with that crash during the breakaway. We actually drove from one crash to the next. It's total chaos," De Cauwer recalls. "We have never seen a picture of how it ultimately happened. It must be that Ballerini's bicycle catapulted to the right again."

"There was already that crash 4 kilometers earlier, including Roglic, but everything came together again. There was a 'practice' through the peloton," he continues, referring to Evenepoel's second crash of the day. "Remco is then surprised by someone who comes from the right and does not actually make a mistake, I think. It is rather Remco who is 'away' for a while. He did not see that rider who still wanted to sprint coming."