The depth of the Ineos Grenadiers team supporting Richard Carapas in the Giro d'Italia is evident in the names of those left out of the squad. There was no place for the experienced Elia Viviani, the 2020 winner Tao Geoghegan Hart, and most notably, the in-form Eddie Dunbar, winner of the Settimana Coppi e Bartali. As the race began, Matteo Tosatto admitted that the process of assembling the team was not straightforward, but one name was virtually an automatic selection. Ineos had won three of the last four Giro d'Italia, and Salvatore Puccio was the only rider to have contributed to the success of that trip to Italy.

Tosatto described Puccio as the "faro" (guide) of the Ineos Giro d'Italia team, and although he was plagued by illness and injury early in the season, there was little chance that the Italian would be considered redundant here. He has been racing the Giro for nine years now, and the team trusts him. That's important."

Puccio's Giro debut came in 2013, when his Sky team won the second stage of the team time trial on the island of Ischia, and he began giddily wearing the pink jersey. Perhaps more fitting for his career, Gregario was an accidental maglia rosa. In the pre-stage briefing, it was thought that Dario Cataldo would finish first and Sky would take the jersey, but the team overlooked the fact that the overall standings would be determined by the standings from the opening road stage the day before.

Thus the novice Puccio had an unexpected day of pink on the Amalfi Coast. The Englishman's Giro attempt was unfortunate, and Sky would experience several false dawns in Italy until Chris Froome won the Corsa Rosa in Finestre in 2018.

Puccio was by Froome's side throughout that Giro and was road captain two years later when Tao Geoghegan Hart took a surprise win in 2020, delayed by a pandemic; 12 months ago, Puccio was part of Egan Bernal's escort, and the Colombian was a full two weeks carrying the pink jersey.

"This is my ninth Giro, and they've all been very different, but I've been lucky to win three times and with three champions," Puccio said. All three giro's were very different. Froome turned the whole thing around a couple of days after the finish. There were two weeks of struggling and trying to move up the GC standings, and then the finale was a historic achievement.

"Tao was a bit of a surprise in that it came together in the last few days of the race. Last year, Egan controlled the race from the start.

But while Bernal's win was, from the outside looking in, the easiest of the three Giro wins, it was perhaps the most difficult for the team's engine room. When Bernal won the maglia rosa in Campo Felice on the second weekend, Puccio and Filippo Ganna took a long, long shift at the front of the peloton, with Ineos taking most of the race control responsibility.

"Egan is a talented racer, and maybe he had a little more leeway than the others. He defended the jersey day in and day out for almost two weeks." "

After working for the stern Froome--"Chris had the situation in his hands from kilometer zero to the finish," Puccio told Bichipro before the Giro--and the multi-talented and sociable Bernal, Puccio now serves a quieter type of leader. 'Richard is a very reserved man, but very sure of himself,' he said. And he is very decisive in critical moments."

Calapaz made his first flex in the Giro d'Italia when he led a group of favorites home after Ineos set the tempo for Tom Dumoulin and Vincenzo Nibali on stage 4 on Mount Etna. The next crucial stage is Friday's road to Potenza, but every day is a pit stop in the Giro.

On the run-in to Messina on stage 5, Puccio helped Carapaz get home safely in the peloton, keeping the Ecuadorian in good position for 11th place overall and 2:06 behind leader Juan Pedro Lopez (Trek-Segafredo). One day to go.

In the evening, Puccio and Giro cross from Messina to the mainland by ferry. Originally from Melfi, Puccio left Sicily with his family in his teens and moved north to Umbria. Men like Puccio, Damiano Caruso, and, above all, the retired Vincenzo Nibali have increased Sicily's presence in the Gruppo over the past decade or so, but the center of gravity of Italian cycling has not changed.

"Cycling has evolved a bit," Puccio said." However, young Sicilian riders are being forced to leave home and move to the north to find higher-level teams."