Fan makes Sam Oomen crash post-Giro d'Italia stage five

Imagine the excitement you would feel as Sam Oomen sped towards you, bidon in hand, ready to give you a precious memento of his 21st place on stage five of the Giro d'Italia.

Maybe you've been a Oomen fan since his fourth place at the Tour de l'Avenir in 2015, since the Sunweb days, and one of his yellow bottles is the only thing your souvenir collection needs.

That elation would quickly turn to horror as that drawstring bag you forgot you were carrying in your left hand gets caught in the Dutch superstar's handlebars, causing him to face plant onto the tarmac in Messina.

This is exactly what happened to the poor 26-year-old on Wednesday, crashing post-stage, hardly the recovery Oomen needed. 

In the video of the incident, the fan who caused the crash appears to lambast the rider himself for crashing, although it might have been some words of self-admonishment; my lip reading skills in Italian, or its Sicilian dialect, aren't good enough to work that out.

Jumbo-Visma later tweeted that "at first glance, he seems to be doing OK", and later added that while he was in pain, he would continue in the race.

The Dutch team hasn't had a great Giro so far. The usually-dominant squad impressed on stage two's time trial, but lost most of its hope of challenging in the general classification on stage four to Mount Etna.

Tom Dumoulin lost almost seven minutes on the other GC riders, while Oomen and Tobias Foss lost a couple of minutes on the front group, meaning riders like Simon Yates and Richard Carapaz have almost disappeared into the distance ahead of them.

The crash for Oomen won't help their mood, although if he was thought to be out of GC contention already, perhaps he will be given some time to heal his wounds before the big mountain tests to come in the final week of the race.

It's not the first time that a fan has caused a rider to crash, not even this year - Yves Lampaert can attest to that - but for it to happen after a stage has finished makes it unusual.

Jumbo-Visma will hope to have better fortune in the days to come, now the Giro has reached the Italian mainland.