John Degenkolb’s moustache wins stage five of the Giro

With no changes in the general classification, by far the biggest news on stage five was that John Degenkolb’s moustache conquered steep climbs and crashes to sprint to victory. Here is a photograph of John Degenkolb’s moustache (seen here with a man called John Degenkolb attached to it).

Sprinters are more muscly than other riders and therefore heavier which means they tend to struggle on climbs. Degenkolb is known as a sprinter who can climb okay. That was important on stage five where the climb to Montescaglioso came with 25km to go. It was 4km long, but featured a couple of kilometres at 9% with some sections really rearing up. Mark Cavendish couldn’t stay in the bunch and therefore didn’t get to contest the sprint.

In hindsight, Cavendish can probably think himself lucky as pretty much everybody floored it on the final corner. Not John Degenkolb’s moustache though. It remained proudly aloft and sped past Marco Canola, who had rather flukily found himself freed of rivals coming into the home straight as he had been leading the peloton at the time and therefore avoided all the deckage taking place immediately behind him.