Philip Deignan sounds confident his form can build on this Giro and is in very relaxed mood about the opening week; seen here on the road to Viggiano on yesterday's stage 5 (Photo: Sirotti)
Wednesday May 14, Stage 5: Taranto - Viggiano (203km)
By: Philip Deignan
Last night we stayed in the same hotel as the night before, which makes life a bit easier straight after the stage.
But the problem with staying in one hotel for more than one night is that you tend to make more of a mess in the room and leave your stuff lying all over the place.
So this morning after breakfast I had to spend an extra few minutes packing my suitcase before hopping on the team bus to go to the start.
As today’s stage finished on top of an 8km climb that looked pretty suited to my Norwegian teammate Edvald Boassen Hagen, the plan at Team Sky today was for Eddy to try and go for the stage win.
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Our sprinter Ben Swift was to go with the early breakaway in the hope that he would still be out front by the time we reached the intermediate sprint after 70kms.
Being told to get into an early move is often a lot easier said than done. But when an 11 man group went clear about 15km in, ‘Swifty’ was present and ready to try and score some points towards the red points jersey.
We had a strong head-crosswind at the time Swifty’s group went and the Orica GreenEDGE team of pink jersey Michael Matthews seemed pretty happy to just let them go and ride tempo behind them.
As the rider placed highest overall of the escapees, at 29 seconds, Swifty became race leader on the road once the gap went over half a minute. But even though they had five minutes at one point we always expected them to come back later on as we hit the climbs.
With only a few seconds separating the guys at the top of the general classification, we knew there would be plenty of teams keen to try and do something on the last hill, either in an effort to take the stage win or the pink jersey.
It was pretty windy at the very front today so while some of the lads rode in a line behind the Orica GreenEDGE boys, I stayed tucked into the middle of the bunch for shelter with the others.
Deignan's team mate Ben Swift (far right) in the early breakaway yesterday on the way to picking up maximum points at the intermediate sprint. He was also virtual overall leader on the road for a while.
As the breakaways started to come back, there was a bit of jostling coming into the bottom of the penultimate climb with around 20km to go and I got caught behind a pretty big crash in the middle of the bunch.
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I don’t know how it happened or what caused it but it’s one of those things to be expected when guys are all trying to get the best position leading into a climb.
To be honest, if I was on a good day and had the legs, I would have been in front of the crash and avoided it altogether. But today wasn’t one of those days.
I know from experience that just because you feel bad at the start of a race, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll feel bad at the end. But today’s stage was over five hours long and I never felt better than average all day.
After the crash happened, the peloton split in half but I didn’t really make much effort to get back to the group. I had a fair idea just before the climb that I didn’t have any real power today and when you’re on one of those days there’s no point in forcing it.
I rode to the top and onto the final 13km lap in a little group containing Thomas Dekker of Garmin Sharp and a few others.
As it had started to get a bit cold, I grabbed a rain jacket from the team car as it drove past and put it on before the descent, which was pretty technical with plenty of hairpin bends in the wet.
I stayed with this group on the descent but when they started riding really hard on the climb to the finish, I didn’t even try to follow them.
I eased up and rode to the top with a couple of Colombians, two of the Movistar guys and one or two others.
I finished nine minutes down today. But whether you lose three minutes or ten minutes, it’s all the same if you’re not one of those riders aiming to win the race outright or aiming for a really high placing overall.
If you’re not one of those guys, when you get dropped there’s no point in riding hard. It’s just a case of getting to the finish and saving your energy for the next stage so that you can either do something yourself later in the race or help somebody else on the team do something.
Up front, Eddy had stayed in the lead group and as a couple of the Katusha guys put the pressure on near the top, my roommate found himself in a little split of four riders inside the last kilometre.
Unfortunately though, he went into the red a little bit and blew up before the line, finishing at the back of the group as Diego Ulissi of Lampre took the stage.
Although I think today was just one of those days and that my legs will come around again, I was pretty disappointed with myself that I wasn’t there to try and help Eddy on that last climb.
It’s a pity because Eddy had targeted this stage as one that would suit him but after his performance today he is up to sixth overall now and by the way he is riding, I’m sure he will have a lot more chances in the coming weeks.
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