After a long, long wait, Cofidis finally have their first win of 2024 and it was one worth waiting for too as Benjamin Thomas took stage 5 of the Giro d'Italia from the breakaway, denying the sprinters in a frantic finale.
"This felt like an endless team pursuit. We were a perfect leading group. I can hardly believe it," reflected the 28-year-old Frenchman in his post-stage interview. In the break, Thomas was joined by Michael Valgren, Andrea Pietrobon and Enzo Paleni, with the quartet managing to hold off the sprint trains by just 11 seconds in a thrilling finish in Lucca.
Around 10km to go, Thomas began to sense there was a great opportunity. "At that point we still had a fifty second lead and I started to believe in it. The wind was at our backs, so we were able to play against the peloton a bit," he recalls. "At sixty kilometres per hour it all goes very fast, but the wind was certainly in our favour. The peloton had a very difficult time closing the gap."
"During the last ten kilometres I regularly thought about that Tour stage to Carcassonne. I kept thinking: maybe this time it is my day," he concludes, referring to a near miss at the 2022 Tour de France. "The final was ultimately very exciting, especially due to Pietrobon's late attack. I took the risk of gambling and not closing the gap. That turned out very well in the end. I have no words for it. It's really great, especially because this is all familiar territory to me. I had course knowledge and that certainly helped me."
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