Another finishing crash has disfigured the Giro d'Italia as Jensen Plowright managed to sidestep the chaos to earn the best finish yet by an Australian rider in the crash-hit 2026 edition.
After another crash on the final slippery bend of the cobbled finish in Naples took out the big sprint favourites in Thursday's sixth stage, Italian Davide Ballerini took advantage to race away and hold off Belgium's Jasper Stuyven for his first Giro triumph.
Behind the top two, Alpecin Premier Tech understudy Plowright, who's taken his team's sprint reins following the first-day crash which eventually forced Australia's main stage-winning hope Kaden Groves to abandon the race, finished fourth, pipped for the podium by French points jersey leader Paul Magnier.
It was another bruising finale in a race that's featured more than its fair share of crashes and abandonments, with the race's leading sprinter Jonathan Milan, for one, not happy after he was one caught up in the chaos and again missed out on a chance of a win.
"We know it can be super slippery on these type of cobbles when it rains, I really don't get why we have to try to find this complicated a finish," shrugged Milan, who managed not to fall but was stopped in his tracks.
"We could go just straight, but with a few drops of water, you get a huge mess. I'm a bit disappointed because I was in good shape and feeling good.
"It's painful to see riders crashing in front of you," he added, referring to another of the favourites Dylan Groenewegen, who was the first to slide off in the denouement to the 142km ride from Paestum.
It was a spattering of light rain that made the surface treacherous and caused the trouble on the final tight turn leading into the home finish 350 metres away. "A win today was not on the plan," smiled the 31-year-old XDS Astana rider Ballerini after sprinting to victory in Naples' Piazza del Plebiscito.
"But when we arrived in the last corner, I saw the first two riders go down, and as soon as I came out of the turn, I heard on the radio: 'Go, go, go! Til the finish, til the finish, there is a gap!.'
"I just started and I was hoping the line was coming really fast and I made it. … Sometimes the result comes when you truly weren't expecting it."
Overall race leader Afonso Eulalio, of Portugal, finished safely in the main pack to keep hold of his pink jersey, 51 seconds ahead of Spain's Igor Arrieta and 3:34 clear of Italian Christian Scaroni.
Friday's seventh stage, the race's longest at 244km, will doubtless see wholesale changes to the general classification, though, ending with an ascent of the famous and feared Blockhaus where Jai Hindley famously won on his road to victory at the 2022 Giro.
Hindley currently lies 20th, one of three Australians who are 6:22 off the lead, with Ben O'Connor 17th and Michael Storer 23rd.
