Alberto Contador
by admin on Sep.29, 2008, under Biography
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| Alberto Contador, at the 2007 Paris-Nice | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Alberto Contador Velasco |
| Nickname | El Pistolero |
| Date of birth | 6 December 1982 |
| Country |  Spain |
| Height | 1.77 m (5 ft 91⁄2 in) |
| Weight | 62 kg (140 lb) |
| Team information | |
| Current team | Astana |
| Discipline | Road |
| Role | Rider |
| Rider type | All-rounder/Climbing specialist |
| Professional team(s)1 | |
| 2003–2006 2007 2008– |
ONCE-Eroski Discovery Channel Astana |
| Major wins | |
 Tour de France (2007), 1 stage
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| Infobox last updated on: | |
| 21 September 2008
1 Team names given are those prevailing |
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Alberto Contador Velasco(born 6 December 1982 in Pinto, Madrid) is a Spanish professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam Astana. He was the winner of the 2007 Tour de France with the Discovery Channel team and the 2008 Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España with Astana. He is the fifth racer in history, and the first Spaniard, to win all three Grand Tours of road cycling.
Contador has been referred to as the best climbing specialist and stage racer in the world. Notable summit stage finishes on which he has victories include the Alto de El Angliru in the Vuelta and the Plateau de Beille in the Tour. After being widely expected to lose his tenuous lead in the 2007 Tour de France in that race’s final individual time trial, Contador has become a more accomplished time trialist, with several victories in the discipline. He has earned a reputation as an all-rounder, a cyclist who excels in all aspects of stage racing which are needed for high places in the general classification.
Contador’s career has been marked by doping allegations, the foremost of which is the Operación Puerto doping case, which led his Astana-Würth team (a team unrelated to the one for which he currently rides, despite the similar name) being withdrawn en masse from the 2006 Tour de France before it began. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but was also accused of doping after his victory in the race the following year. Contador has continually maintained his innocence, and has never faced any individual sanctions for doping.
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Personal life and early career
Contador was born in Pinto in the autonomous community of Madrid, the third of four children. He has an older brother and sister and a younger brother, who has cerebral palsy. Having previously practiced other sports, such as football and athletics, Contador discovered cycling at the age of 14 thanks to his elder brother Francisco Javier.
At the age of 15, he began to compete in races at the amateur level in Spain, joining the Real Velo Club Portillo from Madrid. Although he got no victories that year or the next, he demonstrated great qualities and was soon nicknamed Pantani (after Marco Pantani, regarded as one of the best climbers of all time) for his climbing skills. In 2000, he experienced his first victories, winning several mountains classification prizes from prominent events on the Spanish amateur cycling calendar.
He dropped out of school at the age of 16 without having finished his Bachillerato and signed with Iberdrola-Loinaz, a youth team run by Manolo Saiz, manager of the professional ONCE cycling team. In 2001, he won the under-23 Spanish time trial championship.
Contador lives with his fiancée Macarena in the city of Madrid when not competing, and enjoys hunting in his spare time. He has a fascination for birds, keeping personally-bred canaries and goldfinches at home.
Professional career
ONCE/Liberty Seguros (2004-2006)
Contador turned professional in 2003 for ONCE-Eroski. In his first year as a professional he won the eighth stage of the Tour de Pologne, an individual time trial. During the first stage of the 2004 Vuelta a Asturias he started to feel unwell, and after 40 kilometers he fell and went into convulsions. He had been suffering from headaches for several days beforehand and was diagnosed with a cerebral cavernoma, a congenital vascular disorder, for which he underwent risky surgery and a recovery to get back on his bike. As a result of the surgery, he has a scar that runs from one ear to the other over the top of his head. Contador started to train again at the end of 2004 and eight months after the surgery he won the fifth stage of the 2005 Tour Down Under racing for Liberty Seguros, as the team previously known as ONCE had become. He went on to win the third stage and the overall classification of the Setmana Catalana, thus winning his first stage race as a professional. He also won an individual time trial during the Vuelta al País Vasco, where he finished third, and the fourth stage of the Tour de Romandie, where he finished fourth overall.
In 2006, he won stages at the Tour de Romandie and Tour de Suisse in preparation for the Tour de France. Prior to the start of the race he was implicated along with several teammates in the Operación Puerto doping case by the Spanish authorities, and the team was not able to start. He was later cleared by the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling’s governing body. Contador returned to racing in the Vuelta a Burgos but he crashed after finishing fifth in stage 4, when he was riding back down to the team bus, and briefly lost consciousness.
2007 season
After having been implicated in the Operación Puerto doping case, Contador was without a professional contract until mid-January 2007, when he signed with Discovery Channel.
Contador’s first major professional victory came with the 2007 Paris-Nice, which he won on the race’s final stage. Discovery effectively wore down the remnants of the race leader Davide Rebellin’s Gerolsteiner team, allowing Contador to launch an attack on the final climb. With Rebellin leading the chase, Contador held off his competitors in the final kilometers, winning him the race.
In the 2007 Tour de France, he won a stage at the mountaintop finish of Plateau-de-Beille, and was second in the general classification to Michael Rasmussen. Upon Rasmussen’s removal from the race before stage 17 for lying to his team about his pre-race training whereabouts, Contador assumed the overall lead and the yellow jersey, though he did not don it until after the stage. In the stage 19 individual time trial, he managed to defy expectations and keep hold of the yellow jersey by a margin of only 23 seconds over challenger Cadel Evans and 31 seconds over teammate Levi Leipheimer. As this was the Tour’s penultimate stage, it was the last real competition of the race (since the final stage is traditionally non-competitive save for a bunched sprint to the finish line) and it secured Contador his first Tour de France victory. It is the closest the top three finishers in the Tour de France have ever finished to one another.
After Discovery Channel announced 2007 would be its final season in professional cycling, Contador announced on 23 October 2007 that he would move to the Astana team for 2008.
2008 season
On 13 February 2008, the organizer of the Tour de France, the Amaury Sport Organisation, announced that Astana would not be invited to any of their events in 2008 due to the doping previously perpetrated by Astana, despite the fact that its management and most of its ridership had changed before the 2008 season. Consequently, Contador was unable to defend his 2007 Paris-Nice and 2007 Tour de France victories. He went on to win his second Vuelta a Castilla y León, as well as the Vuelta al País Vasco by winning the opening stage and the final individual time trial. His next scheduled race and objective was the Dauphiné Libéré but his team received an invite to the 2008 Giro d’Italia one week prior to the start of the race. Contador was on a beach in Spain when he was told he was going to ride the Giro.
Despite the lack of preparation, he finished second in the first individual time trial and took the pink jersey after the 15th stage up to Passo Fedaia. Upon winning the final pink jersey in Milan, he became the first non-Italian to win the Giro d’Italia since Pavel Tonkov in 1996 and also the second Spanish rider to win the Giro after Miguel Indurain won in 1992 and 1993. He later emphasized the importance of this win by saying that “taking part in the Giro and winning it was a really big achievement, bigger than if I’d had a second victory in the Tour de France”.
At the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, Contador competed in the road race and the individual road time trial. He did not finish in the road race, in which 53 of the 143 starters did not complete the course in particularly hot and humid conditions. He placed fourth in the individual time trial, eight seconds behind his regular teammate Leipheimer.
Contador entered the 2008 Vuelta a España as the main candidate to win. His biggest challenger was likely to be compatriot Carlos Sastre, who had won the Tour de France just a month before. Contador won stage 13 by attacking on the fabled Angliru climb and this resulted in him capturing the golden jersey as the leader of the race. He extended his lead by winning stage 14 to Fuentes de Invierno and maintained his lead in subsequent flat stages and the final time trial. That final time trial was won by Leipheimer by a wide margin. Contador later took some offense to Leipheimer seemingly riding with winning the Vuelta in mind, after it had been established earlier in the race that Contador was Astana’s team leader. In the final standings, Contador finished 46 seconds ahead of Leipheimer and more than four minutes ahead of Sastre. The win made him the fifth cyclist to win all three Grand Tours, after Jacques Anquetil, Felice Gimondi, Eddy Merckx, and Bernard Hinault. In the process he also became the first Spaniard, youngest (age 25), and shortest amount of time to accumulate all three wins (15 months). He also became only the third cyclist to win the Giro and the Vuelta in the same year, joining Merckx (who did it in 1973) and Giovanni Battaglin (who did it in 1981).
Later in the year, Contador won the Vélo d’Or award for the best rider of the year for the second consecutive season. The Giro and Vuelta winner beat Olympic time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara and Tour winner Carlos Sastre in a vote by international cycling writers.
2009 season
On 9 September 2008, the seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong announced that he was returning to professional cycling with the express goal of winning the 2009 Tour de France. Astana manager Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong’s former mentor and sporting director, said that he could not allow Armstrong riding for another team and later signed him. The announcement by Armstrong clashed with the ambitions of Contador, who insisted he deserved the leadership of Astana, and hinted at the possibility of leaving the team if he was given a secondary role supporting Armstrong. Contador was later given assurances by Bruyneel that he would remain team leader and decided to remain at Astana for the 2009 season. Contador later claimed the situation was drastically overblown by the media. Contador decided to miss the 2009 Giro d’Italia and may also skip the 2009 Vuelta a España to focus on winning the Tour de France.
Contador started his 2009 season at the Volta ao Algarve race in Portugal, winning the overall classification, placing second on stage 3, and winning the decisive 33 km individual time trial. He was in position to win Paris-Nice again after winning the prologue and the toughest mountain stage, but suffered a breakdown in stage 7, losing his yellow jersey to fellow Spaniard Luis Leon Sánchez. Contador and his Astana team later blamed the breakdown on Contador eating inadequately, leaving him without the energy to chase attacks. Contador finished fourth overall. Contador continued his build up to the Tour by racing the Dauphiné Libéré. He put in a strong performance of the opening time trial and stayed in touch with race leader Cadel Evans on the longer time trial. However, the strong ride of compatriot Alejandro Valverde up the Ventoux distanced Contador and he rode to help Valverde take the Yellow Jersey while finishing comfortably in third place overall.
On 26 June 2009, Contador competed in the Time Trial of the Spanish National Championships. He stated that he entered the race in order to gain more experience on his new Trek TT bike, but he came away with a convincing victory over Luis León Sánchez, the defending champion, winning by 37 seconds. This is his first National Championship as a professional.
Doping allegations
Contador was kept out of the 2006 Tour de France due to alleged connections with the Operación Puerto doping case. However, he and four other members of his team at the time, Astana-Würth, were eventually cleared of all charges on 26 July 2006 by the Spanish courts and later two out of the five (including Contador) were cleared by the UCI. Each received a written document signed by Manuel Sánchez Martín, secretary for the Spanish court, stating that “there are not any type of charges against them nor have there been adopted any type of legal action against them.”
In May 2006, a document from the summary of the investigation (Documento 31) was released. In it, Contador’s initials (A.C.) were associated with a hand-written note saying, “Nada o igual a J.J.” (Spanish for “Nothing or like J.J.”). J.J. were the initials of Jörg Jaksche, who later admitted to be guilty of blood doping prepared by the Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes in 2005. Contador was questioned in December 2006 by the magistrate in charge of the Puerto file. The rider declared to Judge Antonio Serrano that he did not know Eufemanio Fuentes personally. According to French daily Le Monde, he refused then to undergo a DNA test that would have judged whether or not he had any link to the blood bags that were found in the investigation.
On 28 July 2007, Le Monde, citing what it claimed was an investigation file to which it had access, stated that Contador’s name appeared in several documents found during Operación Puerto. According to some sources, Contador’s name is mentioned on a list of then-Liberty Seguros teammates that appear on a document later identified as a list of training schedules for members of the team. A second reference includes initials of riders’ names that appeared on another training document, although neither of those two references could be linked to doping practices.
On 30 July 2007, German doping expert Werner Franke accused Contador of having taken drugs in the past and being prescribed a doping regimen by Fuentes, who was connected with Operación Puerto. He passed his allegations on to the German authorities on 31 July 2007. Contador denied the accusations, saying “I was in the wrong team at the wrong time and somehow my name got among the documents.” On 10 August, Contador publicly declared himself to be a clean rider in face of suspicions about his alleged links to the Operación Puerto blood doping ring.
Major achievements
- 2003 – ONCE-Eroski
- Tour de Pologne
- 1st, Stage 8 (ITT)
- 2004 – Liberty Seguros
- Vuelta a Aragón
- Winner mountains classification
- 2005 – Liberty Seguros-Würth
- Vuelta al País Vasco
- 3rd Overall classification
- Winner points classification
- 1st, Stage 6 (ITT)
- Tour Down Under
- 1st, Stage 5
- Setmana Catalana
- Winner overall classification
- Winner combination classification
- 1st, Stage 3
- Tour de Romandie
- 4th Overall classification
- 1st, Stage 4
- 2006 – Astana-Würth
- Tour de Suisse
- 1st, Stage 8
- Tour de Romandie
- 2nd Overall classification
- 1st, Stage 3
- 2007 – Discovery Channel
- Vuelta a Castilla y León
- Winner overall classification
- Winner combination classification
- Winner Spanish rider classification
- 1st, Stage 4
- Paris-Nice
- Winner overall classification
- Winner young rider classification
- 1st, Stage 4
- 1st, Stage 7
- Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana
- 1st, Stage 4
- Tour de France
- Winner overall classification
Winner youth classification- 1st, Stage 14
- 2008 – Astana
- Vuelta a Castilla y León
- Winner overall classification
- 1st, Stage 1 (ITT)
- 1st, Stage 4
- Vuelta a País Vasco
- Winner overall classification
- 1st Stage 1
- 1st Stage 6 (ITT)
- Giro d’Italia
Winner overall classification
- Beijing Olympics
- 4th, Individual Time Trial
- Vuelta a España
Winner overall classification- Winner combination classification
- 1st, Stage 13
- 1st, Stage 14
- 2009 – Astana
- Volta ao Algarve
- Winner overall classification
- 1st, Stage 4 (ITT)
- Paris-Nice
- 4th overall classification
- 1st, Stage 1 (ITT)
- 1st, Stage 6
- Dauphiné Libéré
- 3rd overall classification
- Vuelta al País Vasco
- Winner overall classification
- 1st, Stage 3
- 1st, Stage 6 (ITT)
1st, Spanish National Time Trial Championships
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
Preceded by Paolo Bettini (ITA) |
Vélo d’Or 2007 – 2008 |
Succeeded by |
