Damiano Cunego has announced that he plans to retire after the 2018 Giro d’Italia, bringing the curtain down on a professional career that yielded victory in the race as a 22-year-old in 2004.
Cunego’s Nippo-Vini Fantini team has still to secure a wildcard berth for next year’s Giro – having failed to earn an invitation in 2017 – meaning that he might yet be denied a grand send-off at the corsa rosa. The 36-year-old confirmed to La Gazzetta dello Sport that, regardless of whether he makes it to the Giro, 2018 will be his final season in the peloton.
“The Giro d’Italia is the race that made me known, the race I won in 2004, and the race that made me happiest. I want to participate in it next year, finish it, and then say enough with racing,” Cunego told La Gazzetta.
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“With the passing of time, I note that cycling is being raced at an ever higher level, and I don’t feel as competitive anymore. In short, the moment to stop is coming, and I’d like to do it at the Giro, where, in a certain sense, everything started.”
Early success
Junior world champion on home roads in Verona in 1999, Cunego turned professional with Saeco in 2002 and quickly announced himself as Italian cycling’s most exciting new talent. He won the 2004 Giro after a tumultuous internecine struggle with teammate Gilberto Simoni, and capped a sparkling campaign by claiming the Tour of Lombardy.
Cunego would never scale such heights again in Grand Tours, although he was best young rider at the 2006 Tour de France and placed in the top ten of the Giro on three further occasions. His best spell in one-day races came at the end of the last decade, when he won two further editions of the Tour of Lombardy (2007 and 2008), Amstel Gold Race (2008) and claimed silver behind teammate Alessandro Ballan at the 2008 Worlds in Varese.
Wildcard
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