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Stage 5 - the longest day

Louize Hill/Agnelo Quelhas / 06.06.2008

The fifth stage from Castelo de Vide to Monsaraz is the longest stage of the race at 160 km, and they are not all easy kilometres with 3048 m of climbing. A lot of people, including João Marinho were worried about the stage. The challenges start right from the beginning of the stage with two steep climbs on Roman cobble stones and a medieval cobble stone descent. João Batista started off the day wondering how he would ever complete the stage as the first 15 km took him almost 2 hours as he had to walk the climbs and take the descents slowly as his muscles were still cold and aching from the previous days\' efforts.

Luckily after the forests of the Serra de Mamede, the second part of the stage began. The next about 130 km are “Portuguese flat�, with some sections of road which meant the riders could relax a bit. Estie du Plessis flew today, and said she loved the stage as she could really get into a rhythm and roll along. She didn\'t even stop to eat her ice cream that she bought in a café. Even though it wasn\'t too hilly, the stage was still “quite long� in Nathan\'s words. Other people were less understated. Julian Holliss said he had found it very long.

This stage is marked by gates... and gates of every style and model, it would seem no two gates are the same in the Alentejo. Opening and closing these gates is a challenge that every rider has to deal with, especially as leaving a gate open would lead to disqualification. Many riders chose to ride together in this stage, to share the task. Greg Andre-Barrett and Gary Johnson have been finishing close together each stage this week, but today they decided to ride together all the way. The gates were also the cause of problems for at least a couple of riders. Diogo Vieira didn\'t see one and flew over it, leaving his bike behind. Sonia stopped to open a gate and didn\'t notice there was also a cattle grid, twisting her ankle in it.

The final about 15 km are on an asphalt road that is no longer there... This road used to lead to one of the biggest farms in the Alentejo, but the farm has long been abandoned, and the road is wearing away. The asphalt has almost entirely gone leaving a strip of loose white marble stones that were the foundation to the road. This was really shaky. Nathan had been riding with Pepe, but he fell back here as he had slit his tyre earlier in the stage and didn\'t want to take any risks. Toru Watanabe also said it had been the worst part of the stage for him. Apart from that, he really liked the stage... it is his first time in Europe and he is discovering a Europe that not even many Europeans know.

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