POTENZA, Italia (AP) — Spanish rider Igor Arrieta won the fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia on Wednesday despite going the wrong way near the end.
Portuguese cyclist Afonso Eulálio took the overall lead but missed out on the stage win by two seconds in a dramatic finish.
With two kilometers (1.2 miles) remaining, Arrieta was just behind Eulálio after they had been on a long breakaway together. But Arrieta then misjudged a two-way split in the road, going left and up instead of right and down a slope.
Arrieta soon saw he was confronted by a line of red tape cordoning off the road and frantically turned his bike around. Despite losing valuable time, he still managed to catch and overtake Eulálio with 100 meters left in an unlikely conclusion.
As the dejected Eulálio rolled over the line behind him, Arrieta put his hands on his face in disbelief at the win. The 23-year-old UAE Team Emirates rider then lowered his head as tiredness set in after more than five hours in the saddle amid driving rain and slippery roads.
Guillermo Silva, who on Saturday became the first Uruguayan to win a Giro stage and don the leader’s pink jersey, finished in third.
Eulálio took the pink jersey from Italian rider Giulio Ciccone and the Bahrain Victorious rider leads Arrieta by 2 minutes, 51 seconds overall, with Italian Christian Scaroni 3:34 back in third spot. Danish rider Jonas Vingegaard — who is looking to win the race on his debut and complete a trio of Grand Tours victories — sits 6:22 back in 15th.
The demanding 203-kilometer (126-mile) stage from the Calabria to the Basilicata region featured several climbs leading into a downhill finish to the southern city of Potenza.
Arrieta surged ahead but was caught by Eulálio approaching the summit of Grande di Viggiano — a sharp 6.6-kilometer climb with a gradient of 9.1 %.
When they reached the top amid heavy rain, the maglia rosa group was already drifting away before a mini-group of three tried and failed to catch them in the closing 20 kilometers.
Stage 6 takes riders on a 141-kilometer flat trek for sprinters from Paestum to the port city of Napoli. ___
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