Daniel Martínez finished second overall after the fifth stage of the Vuelta la País Vasco 2022

Stage 5 of the Vuelta al País 2022 opened the day with the bad news of the retirement of Colombian cyclist Sergio Higuita from Bora Hansgrohe, the Antioquian has not had the best feelings in the competition since the beginning, after arriving as the champion of the Vuelta a Catalunya 2022.

Primoz Roglic of Jumbo Visma started again as leader of the general classification in the Basque round, however, on matchday 4, coffee grower Daniel Felipe Martínez approached him in positions going from 8th to 3rd after winning Thursday's stage and bonus 10 seconds.

The competition has become even tighter in the top 10 with only two days left to finish. This Friday the competition between Zamudio and Mallabia proposed 163.8 kilometers of route with several important slopes that made the difference in terms of the auction, where some runners were tired.

After several escape attempts by more than 20 riders, the platoon finally allowed at least 9 cyclists to get ahead, including Spaniards Marc Soler of UAE Team Emirates, Carlos Rodriguez of Ineos Grenadiers and Lucas Hamilton of the Bike Exchange, among others, the Australian who suffered an accident during a corner in descent had to drop out almost halfway through the race.

The two Spaniards maintained much of the route working together to be able to keep the bonuses that the flying goals gave. Meanwhile, in the back, the platoon was moving forward trying to cut time with the escape, especially with Marc Soler who at one point became the virtual leader of the competition.

Remco Evenepoel of Quick Step Alpha Vinil opened the group with 15 km to the finish line with a powerful acceleration followed by Colombian Daniel Felipe Martínez of Ineos, Ion Izagirre of Cofidis, Enric Mas of the Movistar Team, Aleksandr Vlasov of Bora, Pello Bilbao of Bahrain Victorious, among others.

Roglic would wait for the movement of other runners, but little by little he lost time to his direct rivals, giving up the lead virtually once again but against Remco. Rigoberto Urán meanwhile stayed in Roglic's group, also giving up time with the runners ahead.

Less than 10 km to reach the finish line Roglic tried to react with the largest squad, but the escapees were driven to seek the best result by taking up to 30 seconds from the leader, which made the pursuit difficult as they worked together. Marc Soler slowed down in the first escape and Rodríguez looked like he was doing his own race ahead of the end.

Roglic gave up less than 2 kilometers 1 minute to Remco's group, thus leaving the lead in the hands of the Belgian. Meanwhile, Daniel Martinez came in second after his teammate Carlos Rodríguez won this Friday's day.

The bonus helped Martínez to place 2nd overall, just 2 seconds behind Remco Evenepoel who took the top of the overall standings with only 1 stage left to specify the 61st edition champion of the Basque Round.

The second best Colombian of the day was Rigoberto Urán of the EF Education EasyPost, who entered 1 minutes 22 seconds behind the winner of the day thus losing two places and placing 14th overall.

Sebastian Henao from Astana entered 1 minutes 32 seconds, while Diego Andrés Camargo of EF Education EasyPost arrived after 20 minutes just like Daniel Mendez from Kern Pharma.

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