Damiano Caruso (born 12 October 1987) is an Italian professional road bicycle racer, who rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Bahrain Victorious. A stage winner at both the 2021 Giro d'Italia and the 2021 Vuelta a España, Caruso was also the 2008 under-23 Italian national champion for the road race. He competed at the 2020 Summer Olympics, in the road race.
Career
Italian-based teams (2009–2014)
Born in Ragusa, Sicily, Caruso has competed as a professional since the second half of the 2009 season, competing for the LPR Brakes–Farnese Vini, and De Rosa–Stac Plastic teams, before joining Liquigas–Cannondale for the 2011 season.
In October 2011, the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) requested for Caruso to be suspended from competition for two years, although backdated from December 2010, in relation to a doping offence in 2007. He was given a backdated one-year ban in February 2012, allowing for him to return to competition without being banned, but all his 2011 results were voided.
Caruso held the lead of the young rider classification at the 2012 Giro d'Italia, after Garmin–Barracuda's Peter Stetina lost time on the eighth stage.
BMC Racing Team (2015–2018)
In August 2014, Caruso signed a multi-year deal with the BMC Racing Team. At the end of 2014, Caruso scored a top-10 placing in the Vuelta a España, finishing ninth in the general classification. In 2015, Caruso finished eighth in the Giro d'Italia, before he was named in the start list for the Tour de France for the first time. Caruso rode each of the following five editions of the race.
Bahrain–Merida (2019–present)
In August 2018, Bahrain–Merida announced that Caruso would join them from 2019 on an initial two-year contract, with a continued focus on riding as a domestique in Grand Tours and to take opportunities as a team leader in some shorter stage races.
2019–2020
During the 2019 Giro d'Italia, both he and teammate Domenico Pozzovivo rode as mountain domestiques for team leader and general classification favourite Vincenzo Nibali; Nibali finished the race in second place overall.
During the 2020 Tour de France he rode well with Mikel Landa, who finished in fourth place, as Caruso finished in tenth place overall, his first such placing at the Tour de France.
2021
Caruso remained with Team Bahrain Victorious for the 2021 season; going into the Giro d'Italia he would once again ride for Landa, who was considered one of the favourites for overall victory. However, on stage five, Landa was involved in a crash that left him with multiple fractures and had to withdraw from the race. As a result, Caruso became Team Bahrain Victorious' highest-placed rider on the general classification, and moved onto the overall podium at the halfway point of the race. In the final five road stages, Caruso took four top-five stage placings, culminating in a stage victory on the penultimate day. In second place overall, and trailing race leader Egan Bernal by two-and-a-half minutes, Caruso attacked with 50 kilometres (31 miles) remaining and caught up to the remnants of the breakaway, along with teammate Pello Bilbao. Caruso outlasted Romain Bardet on the final climb, the Alpe Motta, and soloed to his first Grand Tour stage win. Bernal finished second on the stage, limiting his losses to half a minute, and held an almost two-minute lead going into the final stage individual time trial. Caruso took another 30 seconds on that stage, confirming his second-place overall finish. During the Vuelta a España, Caruso went on a 70-kilometre (43-mile) solo attack and won the mountainous stage nine in Andalusia. He finished in 17th overall, and in conjunction with the performances of teammates Gino Mäder and Jack Haig, who both placed in the top-five overall, Team Bahrain Victorious won the teams classification. He signed a two-year contract extension with the team in October, with an additional year's extension confirmed the following month.
2022
After a seventh-place overall finish at the 2022 Tirreno–Adriatico, Caruso took his first senior general classification victory at the Giro di Sicilia – riding for the Italy national cycling team – where he also won two stages and the points classification. He then placed highly at the Tour de Romandie (sixth) and the Critérium du Dauphiné (fourth), ahead of the Tour de France, where he was co-leader of Team Bahrain Victorious, alongside Jack Haig. Haig withdrew from the race in the first week due to injury, and Caruso also had to withdraw in the final week, due to a positive test for COVID-19 – the first time he had failed to complete a Grand Tour.
2023
Caruso started his 2023 season racing in Spain; he finished in seventh overall at February's Vuelta a Andalucía, having finished four of the five stages in the top-ten placings. Another top-ten overall finish followed at April's Giro di Sicilia (tenth), before finishing on the podium at the Tour de Romandie at the end of the month; he finished third on the queen stage – a summit finish at Thyon – to move up to the same position in the general classification. Caruso took this performance into the Giro d'Italia, where he was due to ride in support of team leader Jack Haig. Caruso ultimately became the best-placed rider for Team Bahrain Victorious, and recorded his second top-five overall finish in three years, with fourth place in the final standings. He also competed at the Vuelta a España, where he made it into the breakaway on four stages and recorded a best stage finish of second place on stage eighteen – however, he was nearly five minutes down on stage winner Remco Evenepoel, describing Evenepoel's performance as "trying to follow a scooter".
Major results
Source:
General classification results timeline
See also
- List of doping cases in cycling
- List of sportspeople sanctioned for doping offences
References
External links
- Damiano Caruso at UCI
- Damiano Caruso at Cycling Archives (archived)
- Damiano Caruso at ProCyclingStats
- Damiano Caruso at Cycling Quotient
- Damiano Caruso at CycleBase
- Damiano Caruso at the Italian National Olympic Committee (in Italian)
- Damiano Caruso at Olympedia
