Before the Giro d’Italia had even reached Italy, Bahrain-Victorious had already lost their most important card. Santiago Buitrago, their GC leader, went down in a crash in Bulgaria on stage two, which took out a number of stars. The race hadn't started in earnest and the team's ambitions, it seemed, had already ended.
What followed over the next three weeks was one of the more remarkable team performances of this year's race.
"I would say it was an amazing Giro," Franco Pellizotti, the team's sports director told reporters at the finish of stage 20, the last mountain showdown before Sunday’s processional Rome stage. "White jersey, one stage, nine days in pink, two in the top 10. It was a dream Giro. We also lost our GC rider after one day. The guys did an amazing Giro. I'm very happy and very proud."
Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) didn’t hold back in interviews at this year’s race, telling reporters at stage starts when he wanted to win – and when his goal was to set up a teammate. Racing on something close to cruise control, the Dane could pick and choose his moments – commanding his Visma train to let rip and set up five wins for himself, and granting the freedom to loyal lieutenant Sepp Kuss to pick up his Grand Tour stage trilogy along the way. When Vingegaard said he wanted something, it basically meant he got it. But one goal that remained beyond Visma’s reach, was catapulting Davide Piganzoli into the white jersey.
That honour went to Afonso Eulálio, the 24-year-old Portuguese rider who finished sixth overall and will lead the best young rider's classification to Rome. He defiantly held off Piganzoli’s challenge on stage 20.
Twelve months ago Eulálio was an unknown quantity, arriving at the team with nothing else to point to but potential. Pellizotti watched him transform across three weeks.
"He arrived last year as a young guy who nobody knew," the Italian said, "but after one year he improved a lot. In this Giro, I think he learned too much in a short time."
The phrasing is telling. Too much, too fast – the compressed education of a Grand Tour, where lessons arrived at hectic finales, on treacherous rain-soaked roads, (Eulálio’s two-up battle for stage five), in scorching heat, across three weeks of accumulated suffering. Eulálio absorbed it all and came out the other side in white.
Damiano Caruso (L) and Alec Segaert (R) after the Belgian's stage 12 win (Image: Tim de Waele/Getty Images)
If the Portuguese rider was the revelation, Damiano Caruso was the spine. The 37-year-old Sicilian, riding what is his final season, finished inside the top ten and, by Pellizotti's account, held the team together in ways that don't appear in the results sheet.
"Without him, it would be very difficult," Pellizotti explained. "For the young guys, he is like a father, and during the race he was unbelievable. I would say he is teaching them and also giving them shit sometimes."
Before the final mountain day to Piancavallo, Caruso had told his sports director he intended to savour what remained. "I know Damiano, and he knows it's his last year," Pellizotti said. "Today he said: 'I will finish this Giro in a good mood and enjoy it for the rest of my life’."
Alec Segaert's stage win – the Belgian converted his engine into a late attack victory – completed a picture that few would have predicted after Buitrago's early exit. The team had arrived in Bulgaria with a plan built around their Colombian climber. They left Italy three weeks later with something that looked, from the outside, like a plan that had always been set.
Caruso rides off into retirement carrying that top ten and the quiet satisfaction of a job that went far beyond protecting his own result. Eulálio's road, by contrast, has barely begun. Sixth at a Grand Tour at 24, the white jersey, and a sports director speaking about him with something close to awe.
