The Giro d'Italia returned to a bike race for the sprinters on Thursday as Germany's Robert Forster (Gerolsteiner) won by charging out the pack and holding off Thor Hushovd in Frascati.
Italian cyclist Danilo Di Luca held onto the pink leader's jersey; cyclists for the Liquigas team have held onto the overall lead for the entire bike race so far.
The 107-mile Stage 5 routed the peloton from Teano to the outskirts of Rome with a fairly level course that saw just one climb.
The excitement built as the peloton entered the narrow streets of Frascati. Alessandro Petacchi's Milram team assembled a perfect lead-out, but the sprinter was edged to the side of the course by Maximiliano Richeze (Ceramica) and couldn't pass him.
Forster won the final stage of last year's Giro in Milan.
Di Luca is followed by three other Liquigas riders in the overall classification; they're all at the time due to winning the opening team time trial on Saturday. Liquigas rider Enrico Gasparotto and two-day overall leader if further down the list after surviving one of the many crashes on Wednesday.
After the fourth Liquigas rider, Andy Schleck of Team CSC is 53 seconds behind Di Luca, Damiano Cunego (Lampre) is 54 seconds behind, and American Dave Zabriskie (Team CSC) is 1:03 behind. Italian Paolo Savoldelli (Astana) is in 8th place.
Cunego and Savoldelli have each won the Giro before and are considered, as is Di Luca, among the favorites. The odds-on favorite, Gilberto Simoni, is 2 minutes behind in 23rd place.
The standings might be due for a change as Friday's 6th stage is a 110-mile race from Tivoli to Spoleto, right over the Terminillo mountains. Count one major climb followed by two smaller climbs on the way to the finish.
See more info and results at VeloNews and CyclingNews.
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