"Antonio Has The Form, The Team And The Race Profile He Has Been Waiting For" — Bahrain Victorious Names Eight-Rider Giro d'Italia 2026 Squad Around Tiberi's Top-Five GC Tilt, Bilbao The Mountain Co-Card, Bauhaus On Three Priced Sprint Days
Saturday evening, Manama. Six days from the 8 May Sofia Grande Partenza, Bahrain Victorious have published their eight-rider 2026 Giro d'Italia squad: Antonio Tiberi as the protected GC leader, Pello Bilbao as the second mountain card, Phil Bauhaus on the sprint roster, and Santiago Buitrago, Damiano Caruso, Matej Mohoric, Jonathan Milan-trade-target Lukas Haedo and Edoardo Zambanini filling the support cast. The brief written into the team's race-strategy document is the most aggressive Bahrain have committed to since the 2022 Giro: top-five GC, two stage wins across the three weeks, the maglia ciclamino points jersey priced at 9/2 a realistic secondary target for Bauhaus.
Tiberi's leadership is the natural progression of an 18-month run that has put the 24-year-old Italian inside the top ten at every grand tour he has finished. The fifth at the 2024 Giro, the seventh at the 2025 Vuelta and the second at this year's Volta a Catalunya have moved his GC ceiling to a level that the team's internal model now prices at 38 percent for top-five and 14 percent for podium. "Antonio has the form, the team and the race profile he has been waiting for," sport director Gorazd Stangelj said at the launch. "The Mottolino-Bormio queen stage is the day this Giro is decided. We have prepared every component of his ride for that one Wednesday in the third week."
Bilbao's role is the closest the team have come to running a co-leadership card on a grand tour since the 2023 Tour de France. The 35-year-old Basque has built his strongest spring since 2022 — second on Stage 5 of Itzulia, fifth on the Liege-Bastogne-Liege roll-out, fourth on the Fleche Wallonne hilltop — and the team's climbing data has him within four percent of Tiberi on a sustained Cat-1 effort. The internal split-card scenario is built around Stage 17 to Sappada, the day Bilbao will be released to chase a stage win if Tiberi is locked into a top-five-defence ride from the back of the GC group. The market is priced 11/2 Bilbao ends the Giro inside the top eight on GC.
Bauhaus is the team's points-jersey card and the rider the strategy document identifies as the most likely Bahrain stage winner. The 31-year-old German won three stages of the 2023 Vuelta and a stage of last year's Tour de Romandie, and the team have priced him on Stages 2 (Plovdiv), 6 (Pescara) and 12 (Sansepolcro) as the three pure-bunch days that fit his profile. The Stage 1 Nessebar 16.4km individual time trial is not a Bauhaus day — he is expected to lose 90 seconds on GC there — and the maglia rosa is not the brief. The maglia ciclamino is, with the team's projections putting Bauhaus inside the top three of the points classification at 9/2.
The supporting layer is the strongest grand-tour roster Bahrain have assembled since the Mikel Landa years. Buitrago, the 24-year-old Colombian, is the high-mountain domestique and the second-in-line behind Bilbao on a release-the-card day. Caruso, the 38-year-old former Giro runner-up, is the road captain and the medium-mountain shutdown rider. Mohoric, fresh from his Strade Bianche eighth, gets the puncheur brief on Stage 9 (Foligno) and Stage 18 (Brentonico) — the two reduced-bunch finales that fit his profile. Zambanini and Haedo make up the valley-stage support package.
The notable absences shape the squad as much as the inclusions. Wout Poels, the 38-year-old Dutchman who carried the team's mountain card at the 2025 Tour, has been left out after a back injury suffered at Itzulia three weeks ago. Jack Haig, the Australian climber who finished fifth at the 2021 Vuelta, was on the long list before the team confirmed last week he will lead the squad at the Critereum du Dauphine in June instead. And the team's American 23-year-old neo-pro Ben Granger, fresh off his Tour of the Gila stage win on Friday, has been kept back for a Tour de Suisse debut later in the month rather than dropped into a Giro support role at the deep end.
The internal climbing-data benchmarks released this evening put the team's expected-value model at 1.4 stage wins, 0.4 podium probability for Tiberi, and a 73 percent probability of finishing the three weeks with at least one rider inside the top ten on GC. The Stage 16 Mottolino-Bormio queen stage is the marked day. The Stage 20 San Pellegrino in Alpe TT — 18.7km with a 1,200-vertical-metre climb — is the secondary GC test the team have built Tiberi's spring around. The full eight-rider squad is on the team plane to Sofia on Tuesday morning.
"This is a Giro the team is taking seriously at every level," Stangelj said. "The squad is built. The brief is written. The Mottolino is the day the GC is decided and we will be there to ride it. Antonio Tiberi is the rider this team has chosen to lead." Tiberi's last public statement before the team plane leaves Manama was shorter still: "I am ready." The Sofia Grande Partenza is at 12:00 local time on Friday 8 May. The first rider down the Stage 1 Nessebar TT ramp is at 13:25.