Giro d’Italia stage five preview: Uphill finish could wreak havoc for sprinters as Wout van Aert looks for first win

The 2025 Giro d’Italia’s sprinter-friendly first week continues with another outing for the fast men on stage five, this time a trim 151km run from Ceglie Messapica to Matera.

Unlike Tuesday’s pan-flat stage four, won by the surprise package of Casper van Uden, this one has a sting in the tail in the form of the short, steep category four Montescaglioso climb inside the final 30km.

It’s a leg-sapping ascent that may eliminate some of the pure sprinters and hand the advantage back to the likes of pink jersey Mads Pedersen, who won stages one and three and was fourth yesterday in Lecce, as well as Wout van Aert and Corbin Strong, who have both performed well on the punchier stages so far in this race.

There’s more steady climbing on the menu after that, with a false flat leading to the finish in the Unesco World Heritage city of Matera.

The final 3km include a punishing ramp that hits 10% and the final kilometre is a steady drag uphill too, so while the stage is likely to still come down to a bunch sprints of sorts, it may be pretty heavily reduced.

Like stage four’s twisting and turning city centre approach into Lecce, there’s another fairly technical finish which could lead to a hair-raising finale as both the GC riders and sprinters jostle to keep position and stay safe at high speeds. There are two left-hand corners approaching the flamme rouge including a tricky one at the 1.2km to go mark before a wide 300m-long finishing straight.

And like on stage four the daily Red Bull kilometre - with six, four and two bonus seconds on offer for the first three riders over the line - is at the top of a short climb, 100km into proceedings at Bernalda. Expect a similar squabble between the main GC riders for those, if the day’s breakaway doesn’t get them first.

Route map and profile

Start time

Stage five will start at around 12:35pm BST and should conclude by 4pm.

Prediction

This could be one for Wout van Aert, who came second on stage one and was in fine form on all terrain during the Spring Classics, only to come away without a win. His teammate Olav Kooij feels a likely candidate to be distanced on the late climbs, meaning Visma-Lease a Bike could be all-in for the Belgian come the finale.

But it’s the maglia rosa of Mads Pedersen who has reigned supreme on the trickier uphill sprint stages so far, and after coming fourth in stage four behind a trio of pure sprinters, he clearly has the form. Although, stage four did show that a sprint finish is anyone’s game, so could this even be one for Tom Pidcock?