Alberto Dainese sprinted to fifth place on stage 18 of the Giro d’Italia, a day he’d marked out in the race being on home roads. A strong finishing sprint saw him win the group finish but unfortunately it was behind the day’s breakaway of four which managed to hold off the charging peloton to take the stage honours.

The day’s break got clear quite early into the day and initially the peloton set a very fast pace behind to control the gap before relenting and allowing things to relax. Team DSM were amongst the chasers controlling the gap throughout the day but as the pace picked up over the hills with around 50 kilometres to race the gap jumped out again and the peloton set about defending it.

Despite a hard chase in the run in, one which saw the peloton split in the run in, the break of four. out front fought hard to hold enough of an advantage to fight out the stage win amongst themselves. Just a handful of seconds behind, Dainese sprinted home to take fifth.

After the race Dainese commented: “It was my home stage today which was special for me. We went in with a plan to race for a sprint and the guys did a good job to control the breakaway early on and then during the stage but it ended up being hard to close with really strong guys up front. I’m really disappointed to come away with fifth winning the bunch sprint but it’s the best we could do today.”

Team DSM coach Matt Winston added: “The breakaway rode really smart today so compliments to them for that. Every team went all in in the chase behind but it just wasn’t to be. The guys did a really good job controlling things but we lost two guys from the front when the race split on the descent. Then up front Alberto did well to win the bunch sprint but today just wasn’t our day.”