GC hopeful fights back into contention on stage five after brutal bad luck on Tuesday

Stage five of the Giro d'Italia was an atypical one on Wednesday. The peloton appeared to be riding the breakaway down, but ultimately sat up on the day's hardest climb and let them go. Several riders benefited from that — not only new pink jersey holder Afonso Eulalio of Bahrain Victorious, but also Uno-X Mobility GC leader Johannes Kulset.

Kulset had lost three minutes on Tuesday's stage four, through no fault of his own. He punctured at the worst possible moment, just before the foot of that day's final climb. Despite racking up a string of Strava KOMs in his chase, he was ultimately unable to rejoin the front group.

Wednesday's stage, though, put him right back in contention, thanks to a smart move in the closing phase. "I feel good and I'm getting better and better. I was really disappointed after the bad luck yesterday, but it's great to be able to take that time back already," he told CyclingPro.net after the finish.

"From the start it was extremely hard. The weather was crazy. I think some riders were thinking we were going to neutralise at the top of the first climb, because the conditions were so bad," Kulset said. "But stopping doesn't make it any better, so it was the right call to keep going."

"We put in a big effort to get into the front group, because on days like this they can hold on all the way to the finish. We had Martin Tjøtta with us — but I also wanted to try something from the peloton. And I think we did that really well," the Norwegian continued, referring to his stage five move alongside Koen Bouwman and Andrea Raccagni Noviero.

"We worked really well together, but on the descent we couldn't see much and didn't have any motorbikes in front of us. When you can't see anything, it's hard to ride as fast as the riders at the front. But we were able to do better than the riders in the peloton," Kulset concluded — sitting fifth overall at 5 minutes 17 seconds behind Eulalio.