The sprint finish of stage 5 of the Giro d'Italia in Messina will not feature favorites Mark Cavendish (Quick Step-Alfa Vinyl) and Caleb Yuan (Lotto-Soudal).

The 174-km stage from Catania to Messina was mostly flat, with the exception of the second classics of Portella Mandrazzi, which peaks at 75.3 km.

The Alpecin Phoenix pushed the pace at the front of the peloton to make it as difficult as possible for rival sprinters on the climbs with over 100 km to go.

The Dutch team soon succeeded in its mission as Ewan dropped back midway up the climb and Cavendish dropped out 4km from the summit. Arnaud Demaret (Groupama-FDJ) also ran into trouble, finishing the climb a minute behind.

Up front, Intermarché Wanty-Gobert (Biniam Guillemay) and UAE Team Emirates (Fernando Gaviria) joined the work along with Alpecin Phoenix (substitute Mathieu Van Der Pol).

De Mare made his return with 70 km to go, but despite the hard work of Quick-Step Alfa Vinyl behind him, Cavendish, who won stage 3 in Hungary, was unable to return.

The Belgian team closed the gap to 2 minutes, but appeared to give up the chase with 50 km to go. Ewan also failed to return to the peloton before the finish.

In the closing stages, Demare pushed past his rivals to take his first win of the 2022 Giro and his sixth stage win. Ewan and Cavendish finished 155th and 157th, 11:57 behind the Frenchman.

"You just have to try and see what you can do," Cavendish said after the stage. 'In a different situation, if it comes down to it, I'll probably come back. For example, we were 30 seconds behind FDJ and Caleb was behind us. Ironically, if it had been all of us together, we probably would have come back."

"That's the way it is. We had to give it our all, and the players gave it their all. In the end, it's okay.

"It's always frustrating, but we knew it was going to happen today. If we could have sprinted today it would have been a bonus.