When the sprinters and their lead-out trains failed to catch the breakaway in the streets of Milan, there was a sense of defeat, disappointment and suspicion. Only stage winner Fredrik Dversnes (Uno-X Mobility) was happy in the hot streets of central Milan on Sunday.
Dylan Groenewegen (Unibet Rose Rockets) admitted defeat and sportingly admitted that the breakaway riders were just stronger. Others were less praising, convinced there was another reason that the peloton was unable to catch the break after a stage raced at a new record average speed of 51.391 km/h.
Lidl-Trek's Max Walscheid was the first to go public with suggestions that the four attackers had benefited from the television motorbike that rode ahead of them. Other riders repeated the accusations, even though they had been in the peloton during the stage rather than watching on television.
The doubts were based due to the high pace and that the breakaway held off the chase made up of several sprint teams.
"What went wrong is difficult to say for the moment. Every sprinter used all their teammates to chase it back, but we never caught them, it was surprising," Paul Magnier (Soudal-QuickStep) said, choosing his words carefully, after winning the bunch sprint but only for fifth place.
Magnier did not want to make specific accusations.
"I want to take my time to analyse the race and see how we lost," he said.
Lukáš Kubiš of Unibet Rose Rockets was more praising of the riders who stayed away and stole the show from the sprinters.
"It was a big effort from the breakaway boys. It was just hard to bring it back, We didn't manage it, so it is what it is," he said.
"It's just cycling, and it's also the good part of cycling."
Dversnes remained proud of his victory and refuted any accusations that the breakaways benefited from the television motorbike slipstream,
"The only motorbikes in the race were the guys in the breakaway," he told Cyclingnews and FloBikes post stage.
"I didn't believe in our chances from the start. It was a hopeless plan to start with, but it got better and better along the way. If you have strong enough guys, it's very, very favourable to be ahead of the bunch on the city circuits.
"The guys who said that motorpacing was involved also know that it is a known thing in the sport," Dversnes continued in the press conference.
"Since it was not in their favour, they will of course complain about it."
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