Damiano Caruso
Damiano Caruso (born 12 October 1987) is an Italian professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam . 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. Born in Ragusa, Sicily, Caruso has competed as a professional since the second half of the 2009 season, competing for the , and teams, before joining 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 's Peter Stetina lost time on the eighth stage. In August 2014, Caruso signed a multi-year deal with the . 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, 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. 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. Caruso remained with 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 ' 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 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 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, 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.