Giro d’Italia stage 20: Damiano Caruso pounces for stage win, Egan Bernal defends GC lead

Damiano Caruso (Bahrain-Victorious) blew Romain Bardet (DSM) off his wheel to win stage 20 of the Giro d’Italia on Saturday.

Egan Bernal finished second on the stage after fending off a dangerous move that had seen Caruso attack from the GC group in the final 50km as he looked to move up from second on the classification.

Caruso had made it into a split at the front of the race as he looked to regain over two minutes on Bernal to pull an unbelievable turnaround.

Bernal played it cool as Caruso’s escape group gained up to one minute through the close of the multi-mountain test and Ineos Grenadiers was put under pressure.

Daniel Martínez again played MVP on the final climb of the day, chewing into Caruso’s advantage as Bernal sat on his wheel. Martínez dropped a handful of Bernal’s rivals on the final ascent before the pink jersey rode clear in the final kilometer to all-but-seal his overall victory, leaving Martínez to finish third on the day.

Although Caruso didn’t unseat Bernal on Saturday, the stage-win makes for some reward for the rider who had started the race as wingman for teammate Mikel Landa. The victory was the Sicilian’s first at his home grand tour.

“I thought about a thousand things in the last meters before the line, all the sacrifices, my training, and all the work done by my teammates,” Caruso said.

“We rode in an exemplary way today, Pello Bilbao in particular did an incredible job and he played a fundamental role in this victory. Today I realized a dream, I think I am the happiest man in the world!”

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Many were expecting team BikeExchange to detonate the day on behalf of Simon Yates, but it was team DSM that lit up the action as it looked to position Bardet for a stage win and a move up the GC. Instead, Yates was dropped on the final climb and finished sixth on the stage but did not lose positions on GC.

The podium positions now look set with just a 30km TT remaining Sunday. Bernal holds 1:59 over Caruso and 3:23 over Yates. Fourth-place Aleksandr Vlasov (Astana-Premier Tech) is way back at 7:07.

“I’m satisfied with the result,” Bernal said. “We managed the situation well, finally we have two minutes advantage for tomorrow, so we’re in a good position.

“It’s not the best to have second on GC in front of you [on the stage] with almost one minute’s lead. But thankfully I still had teammates so I tried to use them and arrive as fresh as possible in the last climb and also for tomorrow.”

DSM squeeze the accelerator, split the bunch

Although BikeExchange had controlled the peloton in the first half of the stage and was expected to try to blow up the race for Yates, it was DSM that started to do the damage on the interminable 24km Bernardino climb.

DSM massed at the front through the second half of the ascent, thinning out the peloton and eating into the gap to the five remaining breakaway riders. Three of Team DSM continued piling on through the long downhill, splitting a small bunch off the peloton that caught the break.

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Bardet and Bahrain-Victorious duo Caruso and Pello Bilbao made it into the small group at the front of the race as Ineos Grenadiers was forced to burn riders in the chase.

Bernal didn’t look to panic as second-place Caruso went nearly one-minute up the road over the second climb of the stage as several of his Ineos teammates began to fade.

The lead group came down to just Caruso, Bilbao, Bardet, and his DSM teammate Michael Storer as the race hit the final climb to Alpe Motta, with the GC group of around a dozen riders chasing 40 seconds back.

Martínez motors through final climb for Bernal

The 8km climb to the line came down to a straight battle between Caruso and Bardet as Daniel Martínez led the chase in the group of six classification riders behind.

Bardet looked cooked through the Alpe Motta ascent and Caruso eventually blew the Frenchman off his wheel before doggedly time trialing to the line to win his first stage of the race.

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Martínez motored hard through the lower slopes of the summit finish as Bernal and João Almeida clung to the wheel. Yates and Aleksandr Vlasov both struggled to hold the pace, and the Russian was the first to pop under Ineos Grenadiers’ unrelenting tempo.

Martínez and Bernal kept pushing hard through the final kilometer, dropping Yates and then Almeida, catching the struggling Bardet. Bernal was unable to catch Caruso, but was able to limit the damage to his GC rival to just 24 seconds.

30km time trial to close the Giro

The Giro will come to a close with a flat 30km TT in Milano on Sunday.

Caruso is the fastest of the podium contenders on a time trial bike and took six and seven seconds on Yates and Bernal respectively on the 8.6km blast through Turin in the Grande Partenza earlier this month.

However, with the gaps between the podium positions so wide, it’s highly unlikely there will be a change in the top-three Sunday.