ENECO no-show continues

Euskaltel continue to fly under the radar at the ENECO Tour with five stages down and only two left to go.

The lack of a pure sprinter in the team ranks à la Koldo Fernández only really shows itself in pancake-flat stage-races like the one going on in the Netherlands and Belgium right now. Five stages into the race and the guys in orange are yet to leave their mark on proceedings, as breakaway heroics are the best they can hope for as the sprinter teams have it all their own way. It's a shame, then, that the riders haven't been able to infiltrate the moves as much as they would have liked. Today's break once again escaped the team, and they were thus forced to sit on and watch for the rest of the day.

Italian speedster Giacomo Nizzolo edged Jurgen Roelandts by a few millimetres, while five of the team's riders came in with the pack. Worryingly though, Ion Izagirre, accompanied by Pablo Urtasun and Adrián Sáez, came in dead last almost ten minutes in arrears. There was no explanation from the team as to why he struggled so unexpectedly and massively, but I can only assume he's been fighting a fever or something down that road. As a consequence, any designs Izagirre might have had on the GC are now out the window with a pair of stages (a short ITT on Saturday and a hilly final stage on Sunday) that on paper would have suited him coming up this weekend.

Stage five results:

• (1, Giacomo Nizzolo (RadioShack), 4:10:20)
• 36, Alan Pérez, s.t.
• 59, Víctor Cabedo, s.t.
• 100, Miguel Minguez, s.t.
• 108, Jorge Azanza, s.t.
• 117, Pierre Cazaux, s.t.
• 155, Pablo Urtasun, 9:54
• 156, Adrián Sáez, s.t.
• 157, Ion Izagirre, s.t.

Photo: Fundación Euskadi Ciclista