What a wild ride stage five of the Giro d’Italia was. The farcical battle for stage victory between Afonso Eulálio (Bahrain Victorious) and Agor Arrieta (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) was a best laugh out loud entertainment, at worst just out-right bizarre. 203 kilometres of bemusement and bewilderment, with a wild goose-chase to finish. Did anyone actually want to win?
Until he placed ninth at last September’s World Championships, very few people had heard of Afonso Eulálio. For the uninitiated, he’s a 24-year-old Portuguese climber who signed for Bahrain Victorious last season after a few years racing in his home country’s competitive but definitely-not-WorldTour-level domestic circuit.
So when he attacked from the break on stage five with 51km remaining, joining UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s Igor Arrieta who had gone solo 10km earlier, this was young Eulálio’s opportunity to properly announce himself to the world, to win his first professional bike race outside of Portugal. And, well, he definitely announced himself. But he’s still not a race winner (he has got a sweet consolation prize, though).
Arrieta won the fifth stage of this year's Giro d'Italia (Image credit: Zac Williams/ SWpix)
Eulálio teamed up with Arrieta who himself is an unknown proposition to many. A year younger than Eulálio, Arrieta is something of a rising star within UAE. Given the stacks of talent at UAE, however, that means Arrieta sits somewhere between 15th or 20th in their hierarchy. Just like Eulálio, this was therefore a grand opportunity for Arrieta to stake his claim for more responsibility within his team.
Behind them, the more the rain poured, turning the slog through the Apennines from Praia a Mara to Potenza into a five-hour-plus odyssey, the less everyone else was bothered about actually competing for the win. Let the escapees have their moment, was the agreed consensus back in the peloton. Giulio Ciccone was in pink, but it’d only be a one-day love story for the Italian.
As Arrieta and Eulálio stretched out their advantage over their 11 other breakaway companions on the steep slopes of Monte Grande di Viggiano, it was clear that they were the day's strongest, bravest and most astute riders. But just like their peers in the peloton, neither one of them appeared to want victory.
First, with 13km remaining, Arrieta crashed on a left-hand corner, sliding fast and painfully along the slippery surface. He didn’t need to pay homage to his three UAE teammates who are already at home nursing broken bodies after stage two’s pile-up, but fortunately he could remount quickly and focus on finishing the stage. Second would still be a good result, after all.
Just a few kilometres later, however, Eulálio came a cropper to the wet conditions, falling off his bike and whizzing across the damp road. He too stood up, but was dazzled and dazed. When he got riding again, Arrieta was bearing down on him. The two-up finish that had looked like materialising for the previous hour was back on. Until it wasn’t.
With less than two kilometres to go, Arrieta failed to follow Eulálio’s wheel and instead made a bee-line for a side road that was cordoned off. At the exact moment he had hoped to be thinking of how he could beat Eulálio in a sprint, instead Arrieta took himself off-course. Eulálio had a free run to the line, victory surely his.
But this stage was anything but predictable. It had one more twist up its sleeve.
As Eulálio powered uphill to the line, commentators began eulogising over his performance. He got knocked down, but got back up again. He was helped by Arrieta’s fall and brief deviation, but here was a deserved victor, taking his maiden professional victory in just his second year of WorldTour racing. In the process of doing so, with the peloton not taking any risks given the foul weather, he was going to jump into the race lead.
The maglia rosa is his – and he has a six-minute advantage to the expected GC contenders. Eulálio is still a raw talent, but he can climb, he can compete, and he can very possibly hold pink all the way to the Dolomites in the third week. There’s even shades of the peloton miscalculating Ben O’Connor’s abilities at the 2024 Vuelta a España. Will others – specifically, the podium contenders like O’Connor and Enric Mas – come to regret that?
Yet while Eulálio would celebrate, he wouldn’t win the stage. Arrieta, back on course, was somehow at the front of the race once more. There was only 250m to go when the young Spaniard sprung out of Eulálio’s back wheel – no doubt shocking the Portuguese – and then sprinted to the line. A fatigued, depleted Eulálio looked crestfallen. His shoulders dropped, his head shook, his mad day out was finally over.
In a race finale which smacked of this year's Milan-Sanremo carnage, Arrieta twice tried not to win, but eventually he wouldn’t be beaten. Victory – remarkably – was finally his. “I don’t really know what to say,” he said afterwards. Don’t worry, Igor, neither does anyone. “I’m really, really happy to achieve this victory.
“When I lost Eulálio in the last kilometre I was like, ‘It’s not possible’ but then I kept pushing. I saw that he cannot go faster than me, and then when I took his wheel I was like, ‘Fuck, maybe I can win this stage’. I was completely empty in the last kilometre but I knew Eulálio was also the same. Both of us deserved the victory, but in the end I had it.”
UAE only have five riders left in this race, but they’ve just won the last two days. None of the forthcoming stages are likely to be as unbalanced, delirious and frantic as this one, though. It was definitely entertainment. We’re certainly familiar with Afonso Eulálio and Igor Arrieta now.
