CYCLING – Team Bahrain Victorious announced yesterday that Italian rider Damiano Caruso will not be at the start of stage one of La Vuelta a Espana in Turin today.
The 37-year-old sustained a fracture to his right hand after accidentally slipping on the floor Thursday evening.
Caruso will be replaced by 22-year-old Briton Finlay Pickering, who will make his Grand Tour debut.
Bahrain Victorious are set to compete in the 21-stage elite men’s road race with an eight-rider squad.
Pickering will be joining Antonio Tiberi, Santiago Buitrago, Nicolo Buratti, Roman Ermakov, Jack Haig, Mathijs Paasschens, and Torstein Traen.
La Vuelta a Espana is the third and final Grand Tour of the season. For the first time in its 90-year history, it will start in Italy.
After previous starts in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, this will be the sixth time the Spanish Grand Tour begins on foreign soil.
From Turin to Madrid, the next three weeks will see the peloton cover 3,151 kilometres across four countries, including Italy, France, Andorra, and Spain, with nearly 55,000 metres of elevation gain and 10 summit finishes.
The route is especially suited to climbers, with only four flat stages, one of which ends in an uphill finish.
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