Stage 5

The road

At the start

Leopard Trek go home, the gravel arrives

Weylandt's Leopard Trek teammates left the race after Livorno, and Tyler Farrar, who was closest to him in the peloton, went with them; thirteen riders are already out. Millar leads Angel Vicioso by seven seconds and Siutsou by nine. Today is 191 kilometres to Orvieto, and twenty-three kilometres of white gravel road are packed into the last forty of them.

How it was won

1. 1179 km to go

   Kohler's day out

   Martin Kohler goes at twelve kilometres and is handed the road: twelve minutes fifty at its widest, still nine minutes up with eighty kilometres gone. The fugitiva giornata, and nobody is chasing yet.

2. 284 km to go

   Millar hits the deck

   Contesting the intermediate sprint, the maglia rosa collides with Angel Vicioso and goes down. Millar gets back to his teammates without losing time, but the day still has twenty-three kilometres of white gravel road waiting for him.

3. 340 km to go

   Onto the strade bianche

   Forty kilometres out the tarmac ends and the dust starts. Kohler hits the first sector 5:45 clear and lets himself think about it. Behind him the peloton stops being a peloton.

4. 436 km to go

   Croce di Fighine

   Scarponi, Kreuziger and Garzelli make sure they are at the front over the dirt climb, which is the only sane place to be. On the descent Cataldo falls and Tankink's bike fails within a hundred metres of each other, and the race splinters down the gravel with Millar coming apart at the back of it.

5. 510 km to go

   Weening and Gadret arrive

   Kohler has a kilometre in hand with fourteen to go, and then the two riders who have been dangling between him and the bunch reach him: Pieter Weening and John Gadret. Ten kilometres out the fairytale ends and the Swiss is just another rider in a trio.

6. 6At the line

   Orvieto

   Gadret and Kohler are swept up with 2.3 kilometres left. Scarponi goes, then Arroyo goes, and Weening, who has stopped looking behind him because there is no point, holds the last few hundred metres by the width of the road and rides into pink.

The result