Gaviria floors rivals to grab second stage win at Giro

Colombian Fernando Gaviria claimed his second victory of the Giro d’italia as stage five ended in a sprint finish at Messina, where Quick-step Floors team-mate Bob Jungels retained the overall race leader’s pink jersey.

After Tuesday’s eventful run surrounding Mount Etna, which saw a big crash as well as the expulsion of Bahrain-merida rider Javier Moreno for pushing Team Sky’s Diego Rosa, the 159 kilometre course starting at Pedara passed without major incident as the sprinters took centre stage.

Russian Evgeny Shalunev, of Gazprom-rusvelo, and Poland’s CCC Sprandi rider Maciej Paterski set off on an early breakaway, but were always likely to be reeled in over the flat second part of the race along Sicily’s coastline.

As the peleton weaved its way around two circuits of Merida, the home town of defending champion Vincenzo Nibali, Bahrainmerida rider Luka Pibernik celebrated what he thought was victory over the line, only to suddenly realise there was still a lap to go.

Quick-step Floors played the expected bunch finish to perfection as Gaviria came off the wheel of Irish rider Sam Bennett (Borahansgrohe) with 300 metres left to cross ahead of a fast-finishing Jakub Mareczko of Wilier-selle Italia.

Luxembourg racer Jungels keeps the Maglia Rosa as general classification leader, six seconds ahead of Team Sky’s Geraint Thomas and ten ahead of Adam Yates (Orica-scott) and Nibali.

As the stage reached its climax, the general classification contenders kept out of trouble during the final turn through a roundabout and into the final kilometre.

In the last 600m, Quickstep Floors cut in from the left to send the 22-year-old Gaviria on to victory and clear in the Maglia Ciclamino sprinter classification leader’s jersey on his Grand Tour debut.

Stage six runs over 217km back on the mainland from Reggio Calabria to Terme Luigiane.