[Take one breakaway star and team worker like Thomas De Gendt to a Grand Tour like the Giro d'Italia, and if the stage is flat, he can ride for Lotto Soudal sprinter Caleb Yuan. If the stage is flat, he can run with Lot Soudal sprinter Caleb Yuan.

In fact, it's not that simple, de Gendt told Cycling News at the start of stage 6.

"Alternating between Ewan's race and my race is exactly what the sport director planned. But it's not easy to suddenly switch to a fresher state," the 35-year-old noted.

"If you're pulled for three or four days in the first week, your legs aren't fresh anymore. But it doesn't seem to be both.

Now in his sixth Giro d'Italia, de Gendt's stage win came in 2012, when he won in Stelvio and finished third overall behind Ryder Hesjedal. De Gendt has stated that he would like to win his fifth Grand Tour this May if possible.

On Thursday, however, de Gendt was at the front of the peloton for most of the stage to prevent lone attacker Diego Rosa (Eolo Cometa) from completing his impossible mission of a shock victory from a breakaway group on a flat stage.

De Gendt does not resent his job as a team worker, but rather knows his limitations.

"There is no one on the team who can do the job I am doing now better than me," de Gendt told Cycling News. 'I can do 150 to 160 kilometers. If you ask somebody else on the team to do it, they might be able to do it that day, but the next day they won't.

"So it's a good job for me, but maybe I'll have to wait for the second day of rest. But right now my job is not to ride the run, but to pull the run."

Aside from how de Ghent fares in the race, de Ghent also discussed the curious fact that two riders with the same last name, along with his namesake Emme de Ghent (Intermarche Wanty-Gobert Materieux), are both racing in the Giro There is also a demand to speak.

Both are primarily team workers, but both told Eurosport on Thursday that they have established a private, less serious "de Ghent" GC classification. It was a "shocking" setback for Thomas, he noted, "yesterday I lost 12 minutes because I made Caleb wait for me on the climb." But as Aimé joked, "My best result here is nowhere near his third place in the Giro. But it's still fun."

Speaking to Cycling News, de Gendt said that exactly 10 years after his podium finish in the 2012 Grand Tour, he has absolutely no time to reflect on it. As riders, we live one day at a time," he said.

What he did have time for, however, was to think about which stages would have been ideal to enter the breakaway if he had not had to work as a team worker. [Some stages, like Naples (stage 8, Monte de Procida, with multiple climbs = editor's note), are difficult to control. It is by no means a long climb, nor is it steep.

"It was the day we were aiming for, but now we have Caleb. So now I have to get my braking back."

But after a rest day on day two of the Giro, who knows?