Cadel Evans

Abraham Olano
Abraham Olano Manzano (born on January 22, 1970 in Anoeta, Gipuzkoa) is a Spanish former professional road racing cyclist. His highest achievement was in 1995 when he became World Road Champion. In 1998 he won the World Time Trial Championship.
Olano started racing 11 years old at the Oria Cycling school, and already at junior level he won several races. Later, Olano went to track racing. He became Spanish Champion in pursuit (together with Etxegoyen, Pérez and Juárez), in the 1 km with standing start and in sprint. In road racing, he started as an amateur for Kaiku and AVSA. He was specialized in sprinting.
In 1992, Olano started his professional career at CHCS. This team shortly after disbanded, and he moved to Lotus. With Lotus, Olano won his first professional race, the Gran Premio de Villafranca de Ordizia in Gipuzkoa.
In 1993, Olano switched to CLAS Cajastur, which was later merged with Mapei. Here, he started to win important races, such as the Vuelta a Asturias and the Spanish National Road Race Championships, both in road race and time trial.

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Adam Blythe
Adam Michael Blythe (born 1 October 1989) is an English racing cyclist who rides for the BMC Racing Team. Blythe began racing at a young age and went on to become a member of British Cycling's Olympic Development Program.
Born in Sheffield, Blythe began cycling at a young age with the Sheffield Phoenix club. Cycling was a family activity, his sister Kimberley Blythe was also fairly successful as a young rider.
Blythe became Derbyshire's Junior Sportsman of the Year in the East Midlands Sports Personality of the Year Awards, 2005.
Blythe left the Academy by mutual consent in February 2008, and went to race in Belgium. He stayed with the ex-professional cyclist, Tim Harris, in Westmeerbeek, near Antwerp. Blythe was awarded a Cycling Time Trials scholarship to enable him to race on the continent and develop further. He raced for the Wielerclub Des Sprinters Malderen which is a feeder club for a professional team.
Blythe returned to Belgium to ride for the DAVO squad in 2009, under the tutelage of Kurt Van Der Wouwer, a former professional. He had joined pro-tour team Silence-Lotto as a trainee in July 2009, it was announced on 7 September 2009 that he had signed a two year contract with Silence-Lotto in the wake of a string of good results for the team. In 2012, Blythe will follow his teammate and close friend Philippe Gilbert to the BMC Racing Team.

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Adriano Baffi
Adriano Baffi (born 7 August 1962) is a former Italian bicycle road racer. After his career as a rider, he became a team director. He is the son of Italian bicycle racer Pierino Baffi.
Baffi was born in Vailate, Italy. He joined Luxembourg team Leopard-Trek as a sporting director in 2010.

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Alberto Contador
Alberto Contador Velasco (Spanish pronunciation: [alˈβerto kontaˈðor βeˈlasko]; born 6 December 1982) is a Spanish professional road bicycle racer, who last rode for UCI ProTeam Team Saxo Bank. He was the winner of the 2007 Tour de France with the Discovery Channel team. With the Astana team he has won the 2008 Giro d'Italia, the 2008 Vuelta a España and the 2009 Tour de France. He initially also won the 2010 Tour de France with this team, and the 2011 Giro d'Italia with team Saxo Bank-SunGard, only to be stripped from these titles later having been found guilty of a doping offence. He is the fifth racer in history, and the first Spaniard, to win all three Grand Tours of road cycling.
Contador is widely considered to be 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, the Plateau de Beille in the Tour and Mount Etna in the Giro. 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.

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Alejandro Valverde
Alejandro Valverde Belmonte (born April 25, 1980 in Las Lumbreras, Murcia) is a Spanish road racing cyclist for UCI ProTour team Movistar Team. Valverde's biggest wins have been the 2009 Vuelta a España, the Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2006, 2008 and 2006 UCI ProTour series championship. He has twice collected the silver medal in the UCI Road World Championships, in 2003 and 2005. Valverde is rare in combining different specialities in road bicycle racing, being a strong climber and sprinter. After a lengthy court battle, he was suspended for two years as part of the Operación Puerto blood doping investigation.
Valverde came from a cycling family, his father Juan was an amateur bicycle racer and bought him a bike when he was six years old. His brother Juan Francisco was also an amateur road racing cyclist. Valverde's first race was in Jumilla, in his region of Murcia, and he finished second. On the following week he won his second race in Yecla. He allegedly took more than fifty consecutive victories between 11 and 13 years old, earning him the nickname El Imbatido (The Unbeaten).

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Alessandro Ballan
Alessandro Ballan (born 6 November 1979 in Castelfranco Veneto, Veneto) is an Italian professional road bicycle racer for UCI WorldTour team BMC Racing Team, and is a former world champion. Although he possesses a frame that is usually more associated with climbing, Ballan has established himself as a leading spring classics contender in recent years. His nickname, Bontempino, is a diminutive reference to Guido Bontempi, to whom he bears a resemblance.
Ballan turned professional in 2004 with the Lampre team. Despite a decent amateur career, Ballan was not sought after by professional teams, and required a little bit of help to secure a professional contract. In his first season, Ballan worked as a domestique for Romāns Vainšteins and Gianluca Bortolami. In 2005, Ballan was given the opportunity to aim for high placings in the spring classics and achieved a stage victory and second overall in the Three Days of De Panne, along with sixth place in the Ronde van Vlaanderen, having attacked the leading group with 37 km to go. Later in the season, he achieved his first ProTour victory in taking stage 4 of the Eneco Tour of Benelux.

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Alessandro Petacchi
Alessandro Petacchi (born 3 January 1974 in La Spezia, Liguria) is an Italian professional road racing cyclist for Lampre-ISD.
A specialist sprinter, Petacchi has won 51 grand tour stages with wins of the points jersey in the Giro d'Italia in 2004, the Vuelta a España in 2005 and the Tour de France in 2010.
In 2007 Alessandro was banned from cycling and had his results achieved disqualified for doping. The court later said that he had not cheated on purpose but had not taken enough care when consuming his legal asthma drug.
Petacchi turned professional in 1996, and rode for a number of teams. In 2006 he moved to Team Milram with sprinter Erik Zabel, following the disbanding of Fassa Bortolo. His explosive speed won him stages in all three of the Grand Tours. In 2004 he won a record nine stages at the Giro d'Italia, which resulted in winning the points classification. He won his first classic in 2005, Milan – San Remo.
He withdrew from the 2006 Giro d'Italia after crashing during the third stage. He had finished the stage with a broken kneecap. In 2007, he won five stages in the Giro d'Italia, bringing his tally of ProTour victories to 21 and making him the rider with most UCI ProTour victories. In 2010, he won the first and fourth stages of the Tour de France. Before going on to complete the grand slam as he won the green sprinters jersey to complete the feat at all the grand tours. In so doing he was the 1st person to complete the feat since 1999 and the first Italian to win the points classification in the Tour de France since 1968.

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Alfredo Binda
Alfredo Binda (11 August 1902 – 19 July 1986) was an Italian cyclist of the 1920s and 1930s, later trainer of Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali. Binda was the first multiple Giro d'Italia champion, securing five victories between 1925 and 1933 that redefined the way stage races were ridden. Handsome, rugged and talented, Alfredo Binda was undoubtedly the first superstar of the Giro d'Italia. A popular rider, Binda essentially became the archetypal modern stage racer way before his time. The legacy he left cycling with was his ability to combine the strength of a one-day Classics rider with an incredible climbing prowess.
Three road world championship titles, five Giro wins, two Milan – San Remo crowns and four Giro di Lombardia victories all indicate the immense capabilities Binda possessed. His record of overall Giro titles wasn't equalled until another legendary Italian rider, Fausto Coppi, took his fifth title in 1953, and it has never been surpassed.
Although born in Cittiglio near Varese, Binda grew up in Nice, in southern France. Learning to become a plasterer, Binda could often be found at the cycling track. A real cycling talent, strong both in the mountains and in the individual time trialing, he was an all-arounder.

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Amaël Moinard
Amaël Moinard (born February 2, 1982 in Cherbourg) is a French professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.

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Andrei Tchmil
Andrei Tchmil (born 22 January 1963) is a retired professional road bicycle racer.
Tchmil was born in Khabarovsk, Russia. His family moved to Ukraine during the days of the Soviet Union. He started cycling and showed enough talent to be moved to a cycling school in Moldova. The glasnost in the Soviet Union allowed him to try a professional career with the Italian Alfa Lum team in 1989.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union he became a Ukrainian citizen, although he eventually moved to Belgium early in his professional career. "People are cynical when I talk about Belgium. They think I'm only Belgian on paper. That is not true. Yes, I was a Russian, even a proud one.... Now I am proud to be Belgian. The first thing I did was learn French. Now there are some books in my suitcase to learn Flemish. It's not easy," Tchmil said in an interview with Cycle Sport.
Tchmil rode the Tour de France five times, but only finished twice and never won a stage.
Tchmil was most famous as a classic cobbled race specialist, thriving in races such as Ronde van Vlaanderen, Gent–Wevelgem, Omloop "Het Volk", and Paris–Roubaix. His first UCI Road World Cup win was in Paris–Roubaix in 1994. He also won the Paris–Tours in 1997 and Milan – San Remo in 1999. His last celebrated victory was in the Ronde van Vlaanderen in 2000 when he overpowered rival Johan Museeuw in the finale. He was easily recognizable in the races, with his signature grimace, old-style helmet, and his powerful riding style. He won the UCI Road World Cup in 1999.

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André Darrigade
André Darrigade (born Narrosse, 24 April 1929) was a French professional road bicycle racer between 1951 and 1966. Darrigade, a road sprinter won the 1959 World Championship and 22 stages of the Tour de France. Five of those were on the first day. The record has never been equalled.
André Darrigade was born at Narosse, near Dax in the forested Landes region. He came to attention at the other end of the country and on the track by beating the future world sprint champion, Antonio Maspes in a meeting at the Vélodrome d'Hiver the night before the six-day race there.
His name immediately appealed to northern crowds. René de Latour said: "It is a very 'musical' name to [northern] French ears, especially when pronounced by a southerner who rolls his Rs like a Scotsman to make it sound like Darrrrrigade. De Latour said:
Darrigade stayed in Paris and joined one of its leading clubs, the Vélo-Club d'Asnières-Courbevoie, at the invitation of Francis Pélissier, the former professional who was one of its officials. Darrigade rode again on the track at the Vél' d'Hiv, winning madisons and sprints, and won four races on the road. He turned professional in 1951 for a salary that barely covered his rent

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André Leducq
André Leducq (27 February 1904, Saint-Ouen, Seine-Saint-Denis - 18 June 1980) was a French cyclist who won the 1930 and 1932 Tour de France.
Leducq was born at Saint-Ouen. He was twice world champion as an amateur before turning professional in 1927. The following year he won Paris–Roubaix and was second in the Tour de France, becoming popular for his humour. His other victories included two Tours de France (he won 25 stages in nine rides) and the 1931 Paris–Tours.
After his retirement, he founded a professional cycling team that raced in the 1950s.

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Andy Schleck
Andy Raymond Schleck (born June 10, 1985) is a Luxembourgish professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTour team RadioShack-Nissan-Trek. He has been the runner-up at the Tour de France three times - in 2009, 2010 and 2011, but was later promoted to 2010 champion after Alberto Contador was found guilty of doping. He is the younger brother of Fränk Schleck, who also rides for RadioShack-Nissan-Trek. Their father Johny Schleck rode the Tour de France and Vuelta a España between 1965 and 1974.
Andy Schleck was born in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, and is the youngest of Gaby and Johny Schleck's three sons. His older brother Fränk Schleck is also a cyclist on RadioShack-Nissan-Trek, and his oldest brother Steve Schleck is a politician in Luxembourg. Andy's father, Johny Schleck, is a former professional cyclist and rode the Tour de France at the service of 1968 winner Jan Janssen and 1973 winner Luis Ocaña, and also managed to finish in the top 20 twice: 19th in 1970 and 20th in 1967. He won a stage in the 1970 Vuelta a España and the Luxembourg National Championships. Johny's father, Gustav Schleck, also contested events in the 1930s.

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Antonin Magne
Antonin Magne (15 February 1904 in Ytrac, Cantal – 8 September 1983 in Arcachon) was a French cyclist who won the Tour de France in 1931 and 1934. He raced as a professional from 1927 to 1939 and then became a team manager. The French rider and then journalist, Jean Bobet, described him in Sporting Cyclist as "a most uninterviewable character" and "a man who withdraws into a shell as soon as he meets a journalist." His taciturn character earned him the nickname of The Monk when he was racing.
Magne was part of the Alleluia Team which, with Pierre Magne, Julien Moineau, Marius Gallotini, Arsène Alancourt, and André Cauet, won the 1927 GP Wolber, considered the unofficial world road race championship.
Magne first rode the Tour in 1927, alongside Andé Leducq in the France team. His two victories in the Tour had a dramatic quality because of the crashes, falls, bad luck and competition that he faced. He crashed in 1931 and was repeatedly attacked by the Italian Pesanti and the Belgian, Jef Demuysere. He finished the race so exhausted that he didn't start again next year. In 1934 he won again with the help of René Vietto, Georges Speicher and Roger Lapébie. Magne was the first rider to win a time trial in the Tour de France, over 80 km from La Roche-sur-Yon to Nantes in 1934.

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Benoni Beheyt
Benoni Beheyt (born 27 September 1940 in Zwijnaarde) is a Belgian former professional road bicycle racer who raced from 1962 to 1968. Beheyt won 22 races and is most famous for winning the 1963 World Cycling Championships Road Race and stage win of the 1964 Tour de France.

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Bernard Hinault
Bernard Hinault (born 14 November 1954 in Yffiniac, Brittany) is a former French cyclist known for five victories in the Tour de France. He is one of only five cyclists to have won all three Grand Tours, and the only cyclist to have won each more than once. He won the Tour de France in 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1985. He came second in 1984 and 1986 and won 28 stages, of which 13 were individual time trials. The other four to have achieved at least five victories are Jacques Anquetil (1964), Eddy Merckx (1974), Miguel Indurain (1995) and Lance Armstrong (2003). Even among these elite riders, he is the only one to have finished either first or second in each Tour de France he finished.
Hinault was nicknamed Le Blaireau, initially for his looks, as he would often don a hairband, thus resembling a shaving brush. Later, the second meaning of this french word (the Badger) would become the dominant reason for his nickname, because the animal has the reputation of not letting go of his prey. Throughout his career, he's been known for his personality: independent, outspoken, quick to take offense and quick with a riposte. In an interview in the French magazine, Vélo, however, Hinault said the nickname had nothing to do with the animal. He said it was a local cyclists' way of saying "mate" or "buddy" in his youth - "How's it going, badger?" - and that it came to refer to him personally.

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Bernard Thévenet
Bernard Thévenet, born 10 January 1948, in Saint-Julien-de-Civry, Saône-et-Loire, is a retired French bicycle racer. He is a two-time winner of the Tour de France and known for ending the reign of five-time Tour champion Eddy Merckx. He also won the Dauphiné Libéré in 1975 and 1976.
Thévenet was born to a farming family in Saône-et-Loire in Burgundy and lived in a hamlet called Le Guidon (The Handlebar). It was there in 1961 that he saw the Tour de France for the first time, on, a 123 km stage from Nevers to Lyon. Thévenet was a choir boy in the village church. He said: "The priest brought forward the time for Mass so that we could watch the riders go by. The sun was shining on their toe-clips and the chrome on their forks. They were modern-day knights. I had already been dreaming of becoming a racing cyclist and that magical sight convinced me definitively. It was never that magical when I was actually in the peloton of the Tour!"
From the age of six he went to school on the rack of his sister's bike. He got his own bike a year later and pedalled the 10 km round journey himself. His first adult bike, not a racing machine but a sporty cross between a racer and a touring bike, came as a present for passing school examinations at 14. His parents needed him on the farm too much to be keen on his racing, but they knew their son's ambitions. Thévenet rode his first race and his parents found out only when they read the local paper. There was a row and the club president intervened by inviting the parents to see their son's next race. Thévenet won it.

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Bjarne Riis
Bjarne Lykkegård Riis (born April 3, 1964 in Herning), nicknamed The Eagle from Herning (Danish: Ørnen fra Herning), is a Danish former professional road bicycle racer who placed first in the 1996 Tour de France, and is now the team owner and manager of Danish UCI ProTour outfit Team Saxo Bank. Other career highlights include placing first in the Amstel Gold Race in 1997, multiple Danish National Championships, and stage wins in the Giro d'Italia. On May 25, 2007 he admitted that he placed first in the Tour de France using banned substances, and he was no longer considered the winner by the tour's organizers. In July 2008 he is back on the list of Tour winners, but with additional notes about his use of doping.
Riis began cycling at local club Herning CK. When he was not selected for the 1984 Summer Olympics, former cyclist Kim Andersen advised Riis to start his professional career not in Italy, but in Luxembourg. His professional career started in 1986, his first result was a fifth place finish in the GP Wallonie that year. Following a few years with no personal wins, he had yet to impress when his contract ran out in 1988.

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Brent Bookwalter
Brent Bookwalter (born February 16, 1984 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA) is an American professional cyclist riding for the BMC Racing Team. His official website is http://www.brentbookwalter.com.
He has competed at (amongst others) the 2010 Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the 2009 Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré. He also competed at the 2009 UCI Road World Championships in the Men's Road Race.
Brent was a member of the Lees-McRae college (Banner Elk, NC) cycling team from 2003-2006. While a member they won 7 national titles.
He came to the attention of many U.S. cycling fans for the first time when he finished second in the opening time trial at the 2010 Giro d'Italia. His time in the prologue time trial to the Tour de France later in the season was also provisionally in the top ten most of the day.

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Briek Schotte
Alberic "Briek" Schotte (born Kanegem, West Flanders, 7 September 1919 – died Kortrijk, 4 April 2004) was a Belgian professional road racing cyclist, one of the champions of the 1940s and 1950s. His stamina earned him the nickname "Iron Briek" (IJzeren Briek).
He was world champion in 1948 and 1950, won the last stage of the 1947 Tour de France and finished second in the epic 1948 Tour, behind Gino Bartali. He twice won the Ronde van Vlaanderen (1942, 1948), Paris–Tours (1946, 1947) and Paris–Brussels (1946, 1952). He also won the inaugural Challenge Desgrange-Colombo, a season-long competition to identify the world's best road rider, in 1948.
After retirement in 1959, he was a team coach for 30 years, mostly for Flandria . He died on the day of the 2004 Ronde van Vlaanderen. The commentators during the race said "God must have been one of Briek's greatest fans".

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Cadel Evans
Cadel Lee Evans (/kəˈdɛl/, born 14 February 1977) is an Australian professional racing cyclist and winner of the 2011 Tour de France. Early in his career, Evans was a champion mountain biker, winning the World Cup in 1998 and 1999 and placing seventh in the men's cross-country mountain bike race at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
Evans turned to full-time road cycling in 2001, and gradually progressed through ranks. He finished second in 2007 and 2008 Tours de France. He became the first Australian to win the UCI ProTour (2007) and the UCI Road World Championships in 2009. Finally, he won the Tour de France in 2011, riding for BMC Racing Team, after two Tours riddled with bad luck. At 34, he was among the five oldest winners in the race's history.
Cadel Evans was born on 14 February 1977 at the Katherine Hospital, Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia, to Helen Cocks, a bank manager, and Paul Evans, a council foreman. He spent his early childhood in the small Aboriginal community of Barunga, 80 km east of Katherine. At the age of seven, he was hit in the head by a horse, and spent seven days in an induced coma. In 1986, his parents separated and he first moved with his mother to Armidale, New South Wales, and then to Eltham, Victoria, where his mother still lives. Evans attended Newling Public School in Armidale, and Eltham High School in Melbourne.Skateboarding was one of his teenage interests. His father describes him as a good student, but otherwise just an ordinary kid who would leave his toys around; "Not in [my] wildest dreams" would he imagine that his son would become a top world athlete. Cadel maintains his current Australian home in Barwon Heads, Victoria just outside of Melbourne.

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Carlos Sastre
Carlos Sastre Candil (born 22 April 1975 in Leganés, Madrid) is a retired Spanish professional road bicycle racer and champion of the 2008 Tour de France. Sastre rode for UCI Professional Continental team Geox-TMC in 2011, before retiring. Through his consistently improved top 10 results in the Vuelta a España and good showings in the Tour de France, Sastre established himself as a strong and stable climbing specialist, and after working to improve his individual time trial skills, he became a contender for the top GC spots in the Grand Tours. In total, Sastre finished in the top ten overall of fifteen Grand Tours during his career.
When Sastre was young, professional cyclist Francisco Ignacio San Román lived in his parents's house during military service. Sastre was at first coached by his father, until he became an amateur.
Sastre signed his first professional contract in 1997 with ONCE. In his five years at ONCE he mostly served as a domestique and only managed a few wins, though he showed his strength in the mountains with several good results, most notably winning the mountain competition in the 2000 Vuelta a España.

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Charly Gaul
Charly Gaul (born Pfaffenthal, Luxembourg, 8 December 1932 – died Luxembourg City, 6 December 2005) was a professional cyclist. He was a national cyclo-cross champion, an accomplished time triallist and a better climber. His ability earned him the nickname of The Angel of the Mountains in the 1958 Tour de France, which he won with four stage victories. He also won the Giro d'Italia in 1956 and 1959. Gaul rode best in cold, wet weather. In later life he became a recluse and lost much of his memory.
Charly Gaul - pronounced Gowl - was a fragile-looking man with a sad face and disproportionately short legs. He had "a sad, timid look on his face, marked with an unfathomable melancholy [as though] an evil deity has forced him into a cursed profession amidst powerful, implacable riders," as one writer put it.
Gaul worked in a butcher's shop and as a slaughterman in an abattoir at Bettembourg before turning professional on 3 May 1953 for Terrot, at the age of 20. By then he had already won more than 60 races as an amateur having started racing in 1949. They included the Flêche du Sud and the Tour of the 12 Cantons. He won a stage up the climb of Grossglockner during the Tour of Austria when he was 17, setting a stage record. It was his first race outside Luxembourg. The writer Charlie Woods said:

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Claude Criquielion
Claude Criquielion (born 11 January 1957 in Lessines, Hainaut) is a former Belgian professional road bicycle racer who raced between 1979 and 1990. In 1984, Criquielion became the world road race champion in Barcelona, Spain on a gruelling course. He had five top-ten finishes in the Tour de France.
Criquielion was well placed to win a medal in the 1988 championship in Belgium. However, he crashed in sight of the line when another competitor, Steve Bauer of Canada, clashed with him. The third rider, Maurizio Fondriest, went on to win. Bauer was disqualified and Criquielion sued Bauer for assault, asking for $1.5 million in damages in a case that lasted more than three years before the judge ruled in Bauer's favor.
Criquielion was directeur sportif of the Lotto-Adecco team from 2000 to 2004. His son, Mathieu Criquielion, turned professional for the Landbouwkrediet-Colnago team in 2005; Claude Criquielion became the team's manager.

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Claudio Chiappucci
Claudio Chiappucci (born 28 February 1963 in Uboldo, Varese, Lombardy) is a retired Italian professional cyclist. He was on the podium three times in the Tour de France general classification - second in 1990, third in 1991 and second again in 1992.
After a quiet start to his career he burst onto the scene in the 1990 Tour de France. Chiappucci found himself almost casually wearing the yellow jersey after a stage one attack which the favourites allowed him to arrive with a 10 minute time advantage. In subsequent stages he resisted the return of Greg LeMond, only losing the lead of the race in stage 20, the final time trial. In the end, LeMond won the Tour by 2' 16", Chiappucci came home with a surprising second place and, moreover, the status of a cycling star. He was the first Italian cyclist to arrive on the podium at the Tour since Felice Gimondi in 1972. This first successful campaign highlighted Chiappucci's main weakness, the time trial. Although vowing to return the following year as a better racer against the clock, Chiappucci never was able to master this discipline.

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Daniele Bennati
Daniele Bennati (born September 24, 1980) is an Italian road racing cyclist specializing in fast sprint finishes. He currently rides for UCI ProTeam RadioShack-Nissan-Trek. He turned professional in 2002, when he joined the team Acqua e Sapone-Cantina Tollo and wore zebra stripes as part of Mario Cipollini’s leadout train. Upon joining the Lampre-Caffita team in 2005, he demonstrated the ability to win on his own, and has continued to do so since joining Liquigas in 2008. He is an excellent sprinter, and has won 10 stages in Grand Tours (two in the Tour de France, three in the Giro d’Italia, and five in the Vuelta a España) in the last four years. He won the points jersey in the 2007 Vuelta a España. In 2008 he also won the points jersey in the Giro d’Italia, but missed the 2008 Tour de France with a tendon injury. He came back to win a stage in the Vuelta a España.
Bennati was born at Arezzo, Tuscany, into a family of cyclists. His father did well as an amateur, and his brother raced as a junior. Daniele entered and won his first race at the age of 9. As an amateur he raced in the Grassi Mapei team, and won a stage of the Giro delle Regioni.

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Danilo Di Luca
Danilo Di Luca (born January 2, 1976) is an Italian professional road racing cyclist who rode for numerous UCI Professional Continental teams throughout his career including Liquigas-Bianchi and LPR Brakes-Farnese Vini. He holds victories in the Giro di Lombardia in 2001, the 2005 UCI ProTour and won both the Giro d'Italia and the spring classic Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2007. He was also suspended following a positive doping test during the 2009 Giro d'Italia. In 2011, he rode with UCI ProTeam Team Katusha, for no salary, but moved to Acqua & Sapone for the 2012 season.
Born in Spoltore, province of Pescara, Di Luca began his professional career in 1998 in the Riso Scotti team. He showed talent by winning the under-23 version of the Giro D'Italia. His first pro win was in 1999, when, moving to Cantina Tollo-Alexia Alluminio, he won the first stage of the Giro d'Abruzzo. He remained in the team taking wins in 2001 such as the fourth stage of the Giro d'Italia and the Giro di Lombardia. Then, he transferred to Saeco-Longoni Sport.

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Danilo Wyss
Danilo Wyss (born August 26, 1985 in Orbe) is a Swiss road racing cyclist, currently riding for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.
He competed in and finished the 2010 Giro d'Italia.

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Davide Rebellin
Davide Rebellin (born 9 August 1971 in San Bonifacio, province of Verona) is an Italian road bicycle racer, who last rode for the Italian Miche-Guerciotti team. He served a 2-year suspension for testing positive for Mircera at the 2008 Olympic Games. He is best known in the cycling world for his 2004 season, when he won a then unprecedented treble with wins in Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège. He is considered one of the finest classics specialists of his generation with more than fifty top ten finishes in UCI Road World Cup and UCI ProTour classics. Throughout his career he has also won a stage in Giro d'Italia and stage races like Paris–Nice and Tirreno–Adriatico.
Rebellin turned professional in 1992 and came to the attention of the cycling world with a string of strong performances during his early years. In 1996 he gained further notice when he thrived in the 1996 Giro d'Italia. Riding for Polti, the young Italian took stage seven and with it the maglia rosa. He held the leader's jersey for six days and finished the Grand Tour sixth overall. Years later he said of the race, "I have won Classics, but the first important win was in the 1996 Giro, winning the maglia rosa with the stage."

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Denis Menchov
Denis Nikolayevich Menchov (Russian: Денис Николаевич Меньшов, pronounced as Menshov), born 25 January 1978 in Oryol, is a professional Russian road bicycle racer for Team Katusha. He is a general classification rider, a climber, and a very good time trialist. In 2005 he won the Vuelta a España, which he won for a second time in 2007. Menchov also won the centenary Giro d'Italia in 2009, and finished second in the Tour de France in 2010.
Menchov started his professional career in 2000 with the Banesto team of José Miguel Echevarri. His first success came in 2001, when he won the Tour de l'Avenir, a stage race for young professionals. A year later he won a stage in the Dauphiné Liberé. In 2003, Menchov had his breakthrough when he finished 11th in the Tour de France, and won the youth competition (maillot blanc). 2004 was his last year at Banesto and his most successful. He won Vuelta al País Vasco, a stage in Vuelta a Aragón, a stage in Paris–Nice and stage five in the 2004 Vuelta a España, from Zaragoza to Morella.

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Dimitri Konyshev
Dimitri Konyshev (Russian Дмитрий Борисович Конышев; born February 18, 1966 in Gorki) is a Russian former road bicycle racer.

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Dino Zandegù
Dino Zandegù (born May 31, 1940) was a former Italian professional cyclist. He is most known for winning the Points Classification at the 1967 Giro d'Italia. He also won the Tour of Flanders in 1967 as well. He retired from racing in 1972.

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Eddy Merckx
Edouard Louis Joseph, Baron Merckx (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈmerks]) (born 17 June 1945 in Meensel-Kiezegem), better known as Eddy Merckx, is a Belgian former professional cyclist. The French magazine Vélo called him "the most accomplished rider that cycling has ever known." The American publication, VeloNews, called him the greatest and most successful cyclist of all time. He won the Tour de France five times, won all the monuments of cycling at least twice, with 19 monument victories in all, won the Giro d'Italia five times and the Vuelta a España once, won the world championship once as an amateur and three times as a professional, and broke the world hour record.
Eddy Merckx was one of three children born to a couple who ran a grocery in the middle-class area of Sint-Pieters-Woluwe, near Brussels, Belgium. His brother and sister are twins. The family moved to the suburb when he was young. He said:
He acquired his first racing bike, second-hand, when he was eight. His hero was Stan Ockers, who died in a fall on an Antwerp track in 1956.

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Ercole Baldini
Ercole Baldini (born January 26, 1933) is an Italian former professional road racing cyclist. The highlight of his career was his win in the 1958 Giro d'Italia.
Baldini was born at Villanova di Forlì (Emilia-Romagna).
At 21 he set the hour record for amateurs, with 44.870 km, gaining the nickname of Forlì train. His best year was 1956, in which he won a gold medal in the road race at the Summer Olympics in Melbourne, and, in September, stripped Jacques Anquetil of the hour record, riding 46.394 km at the Velodromo Vigorelli in Milan.
In 1957 he become professional and won six important races, including the Trofeo Baracchi alongside Fausto Coppi, and became Italian champion.
In 1958 Baldini won the Giro d'Italia, beating Charly Gaul on the latter's favourite terrain, climbing. He was again Italian champion and also won the World Cycling Championship.
Baldini finished 6th in the 1959 Tour de France
His career ended after surgery to a leg.
WD = Withdrew DSQ = Disqualified

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Erik Dekker
Hendrik "Erik" Dekker (born 21 August 1970) is a retired Dutch professional road racing cyclist active from 1992 until 2006. He was a member of the Rabobank cycling team from 1996 till 2006. In 2007 he became one of Rabobank's team managers.
Dekker rode his first race at eight, and soon became successful. In 1985 he was invited to join the national selection for juniors. As an amateur, his most important results were second places at the youth world championships in Bergamo in 1987 and at the road race in the 1992 Summer Olympics. In that Olympic road race, Dekker got away at 30 km before the finish, together with Fabio Casartelli and Dainis Ozols. Dekker was outsprinted by Casartelli, but was so happy that he won a medal that he also finished with his arms in the air.
Directly after the Olympic Games, he became professional, and rode his first race a few weeks later in the Tour de l'Avenir.
His first win as a professional was a stage of the Vuelta al País Vasco of 1994, the year he rode his first Tour de France. In 1997 Dekker won the Ronde van Nederland, but a large part of 1998 was lost because of injuries.

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Erik Zabel
Erik Zabel (born July 7, 1970 in East Berlin) is a former German professional road bicycle racer who last raced with Milram. With over 200 professional wins he is considered by some one of the greatest German cyclists and best cycling sprinters of history. Zabel won a record nine points classifications in grands tours including wearing the final green jersey in the Tour de France a record six consecutive years between 1996 to 2001 and the points jersey at the Vuelta a España in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Zabel won the Milan – San Remo four times and numerous six-day track events. For season 2012 he joined Team Katusha as sprint coach. He previously held that same position with the HTC-Highroad team until their dissolution.
Zabel grew up in East Berlin. After good results as an amateur, he became a professional in 1992 for a small German team. In 1993 he changed to Team Telekom (later T-Mobile Team). There he became a good sprinter. His strength was all-round ability: he could climb reasonably well. This meant that, apart from taking the maillot jaune in the Tour de France thanks to time bonuses, he could pick up further victories when other sprinters had retired and take the maillot vert to Paris. One memorable victory in securing the green jersey was in the 2001 Tour de France when his competition with Australian Stuart O'Grady continued to the final stage in Paris, where Zabel's better placing took the green jersey off O'Grady's shoulders. However, he was beaten by Australian Robbie McEwen in 2002, 2004 and 2006 and Baden Cooke in 2003. In October 2003 Zabel was awarded the Ruban Jaune for winning Paris-Tours with a record average speed for a one day race of 47.55 km per hour. The record stood until 2010 when Oscar Freire won Paris-Tours riding at an average of speed of 47.73 km per hour.

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Fabrizio Guidi
Fabrizio Guidi (born 13 April 1972 in Pontedera, Province of Pisa) is an Italian former road bicycle racer. Guidi won over 40 races since he turned professional in 1995, including two stages in Giro d'Italia and three stages of 1998 Vuelta a España. He also won the Intergiro competition of Giro d'Italia in 1996, 1999 and 2000. He retired at the end of 2007 season, riding for the British team Barloworld.

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Fausto Coppi
Angelo Fausto Coppi, (15 September 1919, Castellania, Province of Alessandria – 2 January 1960, Tortona, Province of Alessandria), was the dominant international cyclist of the years each side of the Second World War. His successes earned him the title Il Campionissimo, or champion of champions. He was an all-round racing cyclist: he excelled in both climbing and time trialing, and was also a great sprinter. He won the Giro d'Italia five times (1940, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953), the Tour de France twice (1949 and 1952), and the World Championship in 1953. Other notable results include winning the Giro di Lombardia five times, the Milan – San Remo three times, as well as wins at Paris–Roubaix and La Flèche Wallonne and setting the hour record (45.798 km) in 1942.
Coppi was one of five children born to Domenico Coppi and his wife, Angiolina Boveri, who married on 29 July 1914. Fausto was the fourth child, born at 5pm on 15 September 1919. His mother wanted to call him Angelo, but his father preferred Fausto. He was named Angelo Fausto but was known most of his life as Fausto.

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Federico Bahamontes
Federico Martín Bahamontes (born 9 July 1928) is a Spanish former professional road racing cyclist.
Bahamontes was born in Santo Domingo-Caudilla (Toledo), of Cuban descent. His family was devastated during the Spanish civil war and Bahamontes' father, Julián, took the family to Madrid as refugees. There Julian Martín lived by breaking rocks before opening a fruit and vegetable stall.
Bahamontes worked as a delivery boy. His hero and eventually his friend was Julián Berrendero, winner of the Tour of Spain in 1941 and 1942 and later selector of national teams.
He began racing in the late 1940s, winning his first race, wearing a baseball shirt on 18 July 1947. It was 12 years to the day before his first Tour de France triumph.
He took the mountains jersey and won the first stage of the 1953 Tour of Asturias at 23, while still not a full professional. The Spanish cycling federation picked him for the 1954 Tour de France the following year and his instructions from the national coach was "Try to win it." He didn't win but he did win the mountains competition and finish 25th.

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Felice Gimondi
Felice Gimondi (born 29 September 1942 in Sedrina) is an Italian former professional racing cyclist. With his 1968 victory at the Vuelta a España, only three years after becoming a professional cyclist, Gimondi, nicknamed "The Phoenix", was the second cyclist (after Jacques Anquetil) to win all three Grand Tours of road cycling: Tour de France (1965, his first year as a pro), Giro d'Italia (1967, 1969 and 1976), and Vuelta a España (1968). He remains one of only five cyclists to have done so.
Gimondi grew up cycling with his mother, a postal carrier who rode a bicycle to make her deliveries. In 1964, Gimondi rode the road race of the 1964 Olympic Games, where he finished in 33rd place. After winning the amateur version of the Tour de France (Tour de l'Avenir), he was signed, in 1965, as a professional to the Salvarani team. With the withdrawal of another cyclist from Salvarani's Tour de France team, Gimondi was added at the last minute and went on to win the tour, becoming an Italian national hero.

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Ferdinand Kübler
Ferdinand "Ferdi" Kübler (born 24 July 1919) is a retired Swiss cyclist with over 400 professional victories, including the 1950 Tour de France and the 1951 World Road Race Championship.
Kubler was born in Marthalen. He began racing professionally in 1940 but his early career was limited to Switzerland by the Nazi occupation elsewhere. He was multiple Swiss national champion and a three time winner of the Tour de Suisse.
Kubler's most successful years in international racing were 1950-1952, when the classics had resumed after the Second World War. He won the La Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège, both in 1951 and 1952. He was also World Road Race Champion in 1951, having placed second in 1949 and third in 1950.
He rode the Giro d'Italia from 1950–1952, placing fourth once, and third twice. Kubler abandoned the 1947 and 1949 Tours de France, despite an early stage win in each. In the 1950 Tour, he benefited from the absence of Fausto Coppi, sidelined after a crash in the Giro. Overcoming Gino Bartali, Kubler became champion by over nine minutes, also winning three stages. In the 1954 Tour, Kubler won the points jersey and came second behind Louison Bobet.

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Firmin Lambot
Firmin Lambot (14 March 1886 – 19 January 1964) was a Belgian bicycle racer who twice won the Tour de France.
Born in the small town of Florennes, Lambot worked as a saddler. He worked 12 hours a day, starting at 6am. He bought his first bicycle at 17 and began riding 50 km a day to and from work. His first race was in a local village; he won five francs as first prize. He then bought a racing bike.
He began racing professionally in 1908. In that year he won the championships of Flanders and Belgium. He rode the Tour de France from 1911 to 1913 but the First World War ended the race for the next five years.
When the Tour returned in 1919 it was a miserable affair of war-torn roads, fractured logistics and former contenders no longer alive to compete. Only 11 riders finished. Lambot was approached at the Buffalo track in Paris, where he had ridden a 24-hour race, to ride the Tour in the Globe Cycles team. He was second for much of the race but took the lead when Eugène Christophe broke a fork. Observers felt Lambot owed his victory more to Christophe’s bad luck than his own ability and a collection for Christophe surpassed the prize money Lambot received. His performance brought him a contract from the larger Peugeot team at 300 francs a month. He was engaged to ride just the Tour de France.

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Floyd Landis
Floyd Landis (born October 14, 1975) is an American retired cyclist who after initially being awarded victory in the 2006 Tour de France was stripped of the title in 2010. He was an all-around rider, with special skills in climbing and time-trialing, and is also known to be a very fast descender. Landis turned professional in 1999 with the Mercury Cycling Team. He joined the US Postal Service team in 2002, and moved to the Phonak Hearing Systems team in 2005. In January 2010, a French judge issued a national arrest warrant for Landis on computer hacking charges related to the 2006 doping allegations.
In 2006, Landis won the first edition of the Amgen Tour of California, before going on to finish first in the 2006 Tour de France. He was stripped of his Tour de France victory and fired from the Phonak team after a drug-control test demonstrated the presence of a skewed testosterone/epitestosterone ratio during stage 17.
Until 2010, Landis maintained his innocence, and mounted a vigorous defense. Although Landis's legal team documented inconsistencies in the handling and evaluation of his urine samples, the disqualification was upheld.

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Francesco Moser
Francesco Moser (born 19 June 1951 in Palù di Giovo, Trentino), nicknamed "Lo sceriffo" (The sheriff), is an Italian former professional road bicycle racer. He was one of the dominant riders from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, and won the 1984 Giro d'Italia, the 1977 world road racing championship and six victories in three of the five Monuments. He began his professional career in 1973. He had an almost effortless pedal stroke that provided great power. Moser was intimidating on a bicycle but his powerful build meant he wasn’t a gifted climber.
After finishing second in 1974 behind Roger De Vlaeminck, and likewise in 1976 behind Marc Demeyer of Belgium, Moser finally won Paris–Roubaix, his favorite race, three consecutive times. In total, Moser has had seven podium finishes in Paris–Roubaix; only De Vlaeminck has more (9). In 1978, he preceded Roger De Vlaeminck and Jan Raas of the Netherlands; in 1979, in front of Roger De Vlaeminck and Hennie Kuiper of the Netherlands; and in 1980, in front of Frenchman Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle of France and German Dietrich Thurau. Moser came in third in 1981 behind Bernard Hinault and Roger De Vlaeminck, and was also third in 1983 behind Hennie Kuiper and Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle. He rode Paris–Roubaix in his final season as a professional cyclist in 1987. His other major Classics victories include the 1975 and 1978 Giro di Lombardia, and the 1984 Milan – San Remo.

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Franco Bitossi
Franco Bitossi (born September 1, 1940) is an Italian former professional cyclist. He was born in Camaioni di Carmignano.
Bitossi cycled for three years as an amateur and became a professional in October 1961, after he had reached the required age of 21. As a professional cyclist, from 1961 until 1978, he won a total of 171 races.
In 1965 he won the Tour de Suisse and the Züri-Metzgete, which he won again in 1968. In 1967 he won the Tirreno–Adriatico, Giro di Lombardia and Coppa Agostoni, while the following year he became the first Italian to win the points classification in the Tour de France.
In 1970, he won the Italian championship.
In 1972 he became famous for his near victory at the World Championship in Gap, France, where he was beaten by only a few meters by his teammate Marino Basso.
Four years later, in 1978, he won the Italian Championship again.
Bitossi was nicknamed Cuore matto ("Crazy heart") due to a cardiac arrythmia which often compelled him to stop midway in a stage.
The following is an excerpt from Bitossi's palmarès - list of races a rider has won:

wn.com/Franco_Bitossi

François Faber
François Faber (26 January 1887, Aulnay-sur-Iton, Eure, France – died Carency, Pas-de-Calais, 9 May 1915) was a Luxembourgian/French racing cyclist. He was born in France. He was the first foreigner to win the Tour de France in 1909, and his record of winning 5 consecutive stages still stands. He died in World War I while fighting for France.
Faber's father, Jean-François, was born in Wiltz, Luxembourg, which gave his son Luxembourg nationality. His mother, Marie-Paule, was born in Lorraine. François Faber had a Luxembourg passport but lived in France and considered himself French. His half-brother was another cyclist, Ernest Paul.
Faber worked as a furniture-remover and as a docker when he raced as an amateur.
Faber was a professional from 1906 to 1914. He won 27 races. His size—1.86 m (6 ft 1 in) and 91 kg (200 lb)—and his suburb of Paris gave him the nickname The Giant of Colombes. He rode for Labor in 1906 and 1907, moved to Peugeot in 1908, then Alcyon from 1909 to 1911. He joined Automoto for 1912 before returning to Peugeot in 1913 and 1914.

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Freddy Maertens
Freddy Maertens (born 13 February 1952 in Nieuwpoort) is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist and twice World Road Race Champion.
In Italy in 1976, he won in front of Italians Francesco Moser and Tino Conti. In Prague in 1981, he beat Italian Giuseppe Saronni and France's Bernard Hinault. He was also second in the 1973 world championship.
Maertens also won the 1977 Vuelta a España, taking more than half the stages; 13 in total, and took the spinters' maillot vert in the Tour de France three times (1976, 1978 and 1981). In 1976 he won a record-equalling eight stages of the Tour de France; the following year (1977), he took seven stages in the Giro d'Italia.
Outside the Grand Tours, his stage race victories included Paris–Nice (1977), the Quatre Jours de Dunkerque (1973, 1975, 1976 and 1978), the Tour of Andalucia (1974, 1975), Tour of Belgium (1974, 1975), Tour de Luxembourg (1975), Tour of Sardinia (1977) and Vuelta y Catalunya (1977).
However, despite his sprinting dominance during the 1970s, Maertens did not win a one-day Classic, coming closest with second places in the Ronde van Vlaanderen (1973) and Liège–Bastogne–Liège (1976). He was disqualified from second place in the 1977 Ronde, which was already highly debated due to an illegal bike change by Maertens on the Koppenberg climb, because of the stimul affair. His other major one-day road race victories included:

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Gastone Nencini
Gastone Nencini (Barberino di Mugello, Tuscany 1 March 1930 – Florence, 1 February 1980) was an Italian road racing cyclist who won the 1960 Tour de France and the 1957 Giro d'Italia.
Nicknamed Il Leone del Mugello, "The Lion of Mugello" (from his birthplace Barberino del Mugello, near Florence), Nencini was a powerful all-rounder, particularly strong in the mountains.
He was an amateur painter and a chain smoker. He was a gifted descender. "The only reason to follow Nencini downhill would be if you had a death wish", said the French rider Raphaël Géminiani. It was in trying to follow Nencini down a mountain that Roger Rivière missed a bend, crashed over a wall and broke his spine.
Nencini's downhill race with Henry Anglade has become part of the legend of cycling. Anglade was a proud rider and Nencini one of the fastest down hills. They met at a col in the Dolomites during the Giro d'Italia. The weather was bad and a snowstorm had forced 57 riders to abandon that day. Anglade said:
At the Futa pass, on the mountains over his native Barberino di Mugello, a monument is placed remembering him: a big bronze bas-relief portrait of him racing and the inscription who says:"Gastone Nencini. Il comune di Barberino di Mugello ed i compagni di tante battaglie ricordano il campione mugellano." (translated "Gastone Nencini. The administration of Barberino di Mugello and the comrades of many battles remember the Mugello-born champion")

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George Hincapie
George Hincapié Garcés (born June 29, 1973 in Queens, New York) is an American professional road bicycle racer currently riding for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team. Hincapie resides in Greenville, South Carolina. He graduated from Farmingdale High School in 1991.
Hincapie is most widely known as a key domestique of Lance Armstrong, having been the only rider to assist Armstrong in all seven of his Tour de France victories. Hincapie was also a domestique for Alberto Contador in 2007 and for Cadel Evans in 2011, when both men won the Tour de France. He is one of only two riders in Tour de France history to have raced on nine Tour-winning teams. As of the end of the 2011 Tour, Hincapie has raced the Tour 16 times, finishing all but the first year.
Hincapie has several important wins of his own, starting with Gent–Wevelgem in 2001 and Kuurne–Brussels–Kuurne in 2005. Also in 2005, Hincapie took two stage wins at the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and 2nd place at Paris–Roubaix. In 2005 he also had his first stage win in the Tour de France where, on July 17, he finished seven seconds ahead of Óscar Pereiro to win stage 15 from Lézat-sur-Lèze to Pla d'Adet. More recent victories include two stages at the Tour of California (2006), the overall and a stage at the Tour of Missouri (2007), and another stage win at the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré in 2008. He is a three-time US Professional Road Race champion (1998, 2006, 2009).

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Georges Ronsse
Georges Ronsse (4 March 1906, Antwerp - 4 July 1969, Berchem) was a two-time national cyclo-cross and two-time world champion road bicycle racer from Belgium, who raced between 1926 and 1938.
In addition to his several national and world championships, Ronsse won several of the classic races in road cycling including the 1925 Liège–Bastogne–Liège, the 1927 Paris–Roubaix, and the 1927, 1929 and 1930 editions of the now-defunct Bordeaux–Paris.
In 1932, Ronsse capped off his career with a Stage 4 win at the 1932 Tour de France.

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Georges Speicher
Georges Speicher (Paris, 8 June 1907 – Maisons-Laffitte, 24 January 1978) was a French cyclist who won the 1933 Tour de France along with three stage wins, and the 1933 World Cycling Championship.

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Gerrie Knetemann
Gerrie Knetemann (6 March 1951 in Amsterdam, North Holland – 2 November 2004 in Bergen) was a Dutch road bicycle racer who won the 1978 World Championship.
A four-time winner of the Ronde van Nederland, he also rode the Tour de France 11 times between 1974 and 1987, winning 10 stages, a Dutch record equalled only by Jan Raas and Joop Zoetemelk. Knetemann won 127 races as a professional.
Knetemann maintained an Amsterdam accent and a sharp sense of humour that made him a favourite with reporters and earned him television and radio appearances. His best year in the Tour de France was 1978, when he led from the sixth stage. Although he lost the leader's yellow jersey two days later, he won the stage into Lausanne and then the final stage on the Champs Elysées in Paris.
His career dwindled after a crash in A Travers la Belgique in Belgium in March 1983. Recovery took months and, although he did again ride the Tour de France, there was nothing of the once sparkling star. Knetemann did win the Amstel Gold Race in 1985. He retired from racing in 1991 and became Dutch team selector.

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Gianluca Bortolami
Gianluca Bortolami (born August 28, 1968) is an Italian former professional road racing cyclist. Bortolami's greatest feats was capturing the monumental classic Ronde van Vlaanderen in 2001 and winning the 1994 UCI Road World Cup season championship.
Bortolami was born in Locate di Triulzi, province of Milan. He turned professional in 1990 and rode for Lampre. He finished 75th in the 2002 Tour de France, 46th in the 1997 Tour, 13th in the 1994 Tour with one stage win, and 73rd in the 1993 Tour. He was tested positive for cortisone in 2003 during Three Days of De Panne. He was suspended for six months by the Italian cycling federation.

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Gianni Bugno
Gianni Bugno (born February 14, 1964 in Brugg, Switzerland) is a former Italian professional road racing cyclist.
Bugno was a versatile rider, able to do well in different types of races. He won numerous stages in the Tour de France, and the Milan – San Remo classic in 1990. In 1991 he won the Clásica de San Sebastián, and in 1994 he won the Ronde van Vlaanderen.
Bugno's greatest success was the double victory in the World Championship. In 1991 he beat Steven Rooks of the Netherlands and Miguel Indurain of Spain, and in 1992 finished ahead of Laurent Jalabert of France and Dmitri Konyshev of Russia.
Bugno's performance in the Grand Tours, however, was over-shadowed by Miguel Indurain. Bugno's victory in the Giro d'Italia in 1990 is considered one of the most dominant performances in that race - he led from start to finish. While he won the Giro in 1990, he finished second to Indurain in the Tour de France in 1991 and third behind Indurain and Claudio Chiappucci in 1992. In a battle in the 1992 Tour, Indurain kept his calm despite Chiappucci's attack in the Alps; Bugno had to chase and cracked in the final parts of the stage. Indurain was quoted as saying that Bugno was his biggest threat in the Tour.

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Gianni Motta
Gianni Motta (born March 13, 1943) is an Italian former bicycle racer who won the 1966 Giro d'Italia .
Gianni Motta was born at Cassano d'Adda (Lombardy). His main victories include the Giro d'Italia (1966), a Giro di Lombardia (1964), a Tour de Suisse (1967) and two Tour de Romandie (1966, 1971).
Like many before him, he turned to manufacture and sales of bicycles after his racing career.
WD = Withdrew DSQ = Disqualified

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Gilberto Simoni
Gilberto Simoni (born August 25, 1971 in Palù di Giovo, Trentino) is an Italian ex-professional road bicycle racer, most recently for Lampre-ISD. Simoni is twice winner of the Giro d'Italia cycling race (2001 and 2003 editions). Simoni might have won a third Giro, but in 2002 he tested positive for cocaine and was withdrawn from the race by his Saeco team - he was later cleared of any doping violation by the Italian Cycling Federation. Simoni is a native of Palu di Giovo, and was considered a climbing specialist. His final race as a professional road cyclist was the 2010 Giro d'Italia, which he finished in 69th place overall, 2:40:14 behind another two-time winner Ivan Basso.
Simoni was born in Palù di Giovo, in Trentino, and began competing as an amateur with the goal of someday winning the Giro d'Italia. Simoni confirmed his potential in 1993, when he won both the amateur version of the Giro d'Italia (known as the Baby Giro) and the Italian Road Cycling Championship. Prior to his retirement in 2010, Simoni would reveal to the Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport that the Giro was the one race that attracted him to cycling and which motivated him as a professional. “It was the Giro that brought me to cycling when I was a child,” he said. “It triggered my dreams.”

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Gino Bartali
Gino Bartali, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (born Ponte a Ema, Florence, Italy, 18 July 1914, died Florence, 5 May 2000) was a war hero and a champion road cyclist. He was the most renowned Italian cyclist before the Second World War, having won the Giro d'Italia three times (1936, 1937, 1946) and the Tour de France in 1938. His second and last Tour de France victory in 1948 gave him the largest gap between victories in the race.
Gino Bartali was the third son of four children of a smallholder, Torello Bartali. He was powerfully built, with a broad nose and a boxer's face. He earned pocket money by selling raffia to makers of covers for wine bottles. He began work in a bicycle shop when he was 13. He started racing at 13, became a promising amateur and turned professional in 1935 when he was 21. He was Italian champion the next year. On 14 November 1940 Bartali married Adriana Bani in Florence. The wedding was celebrated by Cardinal Della Costa and was blessed by Pope Pious XII, to whom Bartali donated a bicycle.

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Giovanni Fidanza
Giovanni Fidanza (Bergamo he grow up in the bourgh of Valverde, 27 September 1965) is a former Italian professional road bicycle racer. In the 1989 Giro d'Italia, Fidanza won the points classification. Fidanza also won a stage in the 1989 Tour de France. As of 2008, Fidanza is part of the technical staff of the Astana Team.

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Giuseppe Saronni
Giuseppe Saronni (born 22 September 1957 in Novara), also known as Beppe Saronni, is an Italian former racing cyclist.
Born in Novara, Piedmont, Saronni turned professional in 1977. During his career, that lasted until 1989, he won 193 races. In Italy he gave birth to a famous rivalry with Francesco Moser, like those of Alfredo Binda with Learco Guerra, and Fausto Coppi with Gino Bartali.
In 1978 Saronni won three stages in the Giro d'Italia. In total he would win 24 stages in this race, winning the overall twice (1979 and 1983).
In 1982 he won the World Cycling Championship at Goodwood, England, beating American Greg LeMond. His final sprint was so impressive that it gained him the nickname of "Goodwood rifle-shot". The previous year he had won a silver medal, as he had been overcome in the final by Freddy Maertens of Belgium. In 1982 Saronni also won the Giro di Lombardia.
At the beginning of 1983 another striking sprint gave him the Milan – San Remo classic, after three consecutive second places in that race. This was Saronni's last great classics victory.

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Greg LeMond
Gregory James LeMond (born June 26, 1961 in Lakewood, California) is a former professional road bicycle racer from the United States and a three-time winner of the Tour de France. He was born in Lakewood, California and raised in Reno, Nevada.
In 1986, LeMond became the first American and the first non-European cyclist to win the Tour de France. The following year he was shot and seriously injured in a hunting accident. He was able to return to the Tour in 1989, winning it dramatically in its final stage. He won again for the third time the following year in 1990. He is one of only nine cyclists to have won the Tour three or more times.
Greg LeMond was a standout junior rider who quickly established himself as one of the most talented cyclists in the professional circuit. After his initial success on the junior circuit he began competing against older, more seasoned competitors. He gained the attention of the US Cycling Federation's national team, riding for them at the 1979 Junior World Championships held in Argentina. There he won gold, silver and bronze medals, the highlight being his spectacular victory in the road race. He was selected for the 1980 U.S. Olympic cycling team, the youngest ever, at 18, to make the U.S. team; however, the U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow prevented him from competing there.

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Greg Van Avermaet
Greg Van Avermaet (born 17 May 1985) is a Belgian professional road bicycle racer, currently riding for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.

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Guido Bontempi
Guido Bontempi (born January 12, 1960 in Gussago) is an Italian former road bicycle racer. Bontempi's career highlights include winning the spring's classic Gent–Wevelgem two times (1984 and 1986) and a total of 16 stages in the Giro d'Italia throughout his career. He also won six stages in the Tour de France and four stages in the Vuelta a España. In the 1988 Tour de France he won the prelude, allowing him to wear the yellow jersey in the first stage. He also won the points classification in the 1986 Giro d'Italia and wore the maglia rosa for one stage in the 1981 Giro d'Italia. He is currently directeur sportif of the UCI ProTour team Lampre-Fondital.

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Gustave Garrigou
Cyprien Gustave Garrigou (b. 24 September 1884, Vabres, France, d. 23 January 1963, Paris) was one of the best professional racing cyclists of his era. He rode the Tour de France eight times and won once. Of 117 stages, he won eight, came in the top ten 96 times and finished 65 times in the first five.
Garrigou was a thin Parisian who gained from his lightness in the mountains but had the strength to ride hard on flat stages. He had remarkable powers of recovery. As an amateur he won Paris-Amiens and Paris-Dieppe. He turned professional in 1907 and that year won the national championship, the Tour of Lombardy, Paris–Brussels and came second in the Tour de France 19 points behind teammate Lucien Petit-Breton. A team rider, in the next three years, he placed fourth in 1908, second in 1909 and third in 1910 behind winning teammates Petit-Breton, Francois Faber and Octave Lapize.
He won the Tour in 1911 surviving not only the race but death threats because fans of another French rider, Paul Duboc, believed Garrigou to be behind an incident in which Duboc collapsed in the Pyrenees and lay in agony for an hour after drinking from a poisoned bottle.

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Hans Knecht
Hans Knecht (26 September 1913 in Albisrieden – 8 March 1986 in Zürich) was a Swiss professional road racing cyclist. The highlight of his career was winning the World Cycling Championship in 1946. He was a professional cyclist from 1939 to 1949.

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Harm Ottenbros
Harm Ottenbros (born 27 June 1943 in Alkmaar) is a former Dutch road bicycle racer who raced as a professional from 1967 to 1976. Ottenbros is best remembered for capturing the gold medal and rainbow jersey at the 1969 world cycling championship road race in Zolder, Belgium. The relatively unknown Ottenbros edged Julien Stevens of Belgium by a few centimetres to take the victory.
Harmin Ottenbros, known as Harm, was a late selection for Holland's team for the world cycling championship after its leader, Jan Janssen fell ill. The Dutch federation, the KNWU, needed a replacement and Ottenbros made up the numbers. World cycling was dominated at the time by the Belgian champion Eddy Merckx, whose repeated victories had won him many enemies. "When you know how much Merckx is earning in this race," the French champion Raymond Delisle said during that year's Midi Libre, "you lose the will to compete for just the leftovers." In the world championship, reporters assessed, many riders were keener on stopping Merckx from winning than on winning themselves.

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Heiko Salzwedel
Heiko Salzwedel (born 16 April 1957, in Schmalkalden) is a German cycling coach and team manager.
After moving from his native East Germany to Australia in 1990, he set up the Australian Institute of Sport Road Cycling/MTB programme in Canberra. World class riders, such as Robbie McEwen, Cadel Evans, Patrick Jonker, Henk Vogels, Matt White, Nick Gates and Kathy Watt, emerged from this programme.
In 1996, as a part of the campaign to include professional riders and races in the preparation towards the Sydney Olympics 2000, he was creating the first UCI registered Australian Trade Team: the GIANT-Australian Institute of Sport Cycling Team (GIANT-AIS; later: ZVVZ-GIANT-AIS).
In 1998, he returned to Europe, working briefly as Performance Director of the German Cycling Federation (BDR) before switching to UK Sport’s Lottery funded “Monitoring & Evaluation” unit in 2000. In 2001, he moved on to work as the Performance Manager at British Cycling.
From 2003, amongst others, he started working as consultant for the Danish Cycling Federation. Further clients of his company SL-sports included the UCI, Speedskating Canada, Swiss Triathlon, Equipe Nuernberger, SRM and the T-Mobile Cycling Team. For the latter, he directed the T-Mobile Development Programme, which included riders such as Mark Cavendish, Ed Clancy, Geraint Thomas and Stefan Denifl.

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Hennie Kuiper
Hennie Kuiper (born 3 February 1949) is a Dutch former professional road racing cyclist. His career includes a gold medal in the Olympic road race at Munich in 1972, becoming world professional road race champion in 1975, as well as winning four of the five “Monument” classics. He rode the Tour de France 12 times, finishing second twice and winning the stage to Alpe d'Huez on two occasions. Kuiper, Ercole Baldini and Paolo Bettini are the only riders to have won both the Olympic road race and the world professional road race.
Kuiper was born in Denekamp, in Overijssel province. His serious introduction to the bicycle was to and from school in Enschede. He started participating in junior races from 14 and from 19 to 23 he won 39 times as an amateur. The climax of his amateur career was gold in the Olympic road race in Munich in 1972, riding the final 40 km alone. He also won the Tour of Britain (Milk Race) that year.
Kuiper turned professional in 1973 with the small German team Haro-Rokado. His career took off in 1975 when he signed for the Dutch team, Frisol, where he got more chances to shine and formed a partnership with José De Cauwer (who worked for Kuiper in races) that lasted until 1980. The 1975 season saw Kuiper become world champion at Yvoir in Belgium, winning a tough race over 260 km, with 21 ascents of a two-mile climb.

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Henri Cornet
Henri Jardry called Henri Cornet · (Desvres, France, 4 August 1884, died Prunay-le-Gillon, 18 March 1941) was a French cyclist who won the 1904 Tour de France. He is its youngest winner, just short of his 20th birthday.
Cornet was born in the Pas-de-Calais region of north-west France. It's not known why he changed his name from Henri Jardry to Henri Cornet. He was a talented amateur - he won Paris-Honfleur in 1903 - but little known beyond northern France and in Belgium when he entered the second Tour de France in 1904. It was his first year as a professional. The organiser, Henri Desgrange, promoted his unknown competitors to readers of L'Auto, the newspaper he edited, by giving them nicknames. He called Cornet Le Rigolo, or "the joker", for his sense of fun. He is described as cheerful, with wide-spaced eyes, a nose described as trumpet-like, and a generous mouth that spread easily into a smile.
The Tour de France had proved a success when the first race was run in 1903 and both the competition between riders and the passion of the fans who supported them rose to sometimes dangerous proportions. Riders took trains and lifts in cars or had themselves towed by drivers; a rider called Pierre Chevalier was repeatedly left exhausted in the darkness of night only to reappear in the race; the 1903 winner, Maurice Garin received food from the race director, Géo Lefèvre when others were denied. Fans beat up riders on the col de la République outside St-Étienne and dispersed only when Garin fired his gun.

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Henri Pélissier
Henri Pélissier (22 January 1889 – 1 May 1935) was a French racing cyclist from Paris and champion of the 1923 Tour de France. In addition to his 29 career victories, he was known for his long-standing feud with Tour founder Henri Desgrange and for protesting against the conditions endured by riders in the early years of the Tour. He was killed by his lover with the gun that his wife had used to commit suicide.
Pélissier was one of four brothers, three of whom became professional cyclists. He began racing professionally in 1911 and amassed important victories before the First World War, including the 1912 Milan – San Remo and three stages in the 1914 Tour de France.
After the war he resumed competition, winning Paris–Roubaix in 1919 and entering the Tour de France for the next five years. Before the 1921 Paris–Roubaix, Pélissier and his brother Francis demanded their sponsor pay them more than racers usually received. Their request was rebuffed and they rode as individuals without team support. Henri Desgrange, organiser of the Tour de France, vowed that they would never again appear on the front page of his newspaper L'Auto, only to eat his words when Pélissier emerged the champion.

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Hugo Koblet
Hugo Koblet (born Zürich, Switzerland, 21 March 1925, died Egg, Switzerland, 6 November 1964) was a Swiss champion cyclist. He won the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia as well as competing in six-day and pursuit races on the track. He won 70 races as a professional. He died in a car accident amid speculation that he had committed suicide.
Hugo Koblet was the son of Adolf and Héléna Koblet (pronounced Kob-lett), bakers in Zürich. He lived with his mother, a widow, and with an elder brother. His brother baked bread and cakes and Hugo was restricted to sweeping the floor and making deliveries by bicycle. He left the bakery at 17 and worked as a trainee mechanic at the Oerlikon velodrome in the city. His first race was a 10 km hill-climb, which he won. That caught the attention of Léo Amberg, a former Tour de France rider who had come second in the Tour of Switzerland. Amberg insisted he ride the track and Koblet became national amateur pursuit champion in 1945. He turned professional in 1946 and won the New York and Chicago six-day races. It was after the races that he developed a love of the United States, driving to California and Florida. He had learned English by watching American and British films. He won the Swiss pursuit championship every year from 1947 to 1954. In 1947 he finished third and in 1951 and 1954 second in the world championship.

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Ian Thorpe
Ian James Thorpe OAM (born 13 October 1982), nicknamed the Thorpedo and Thorpey, is an Australian swimmer who specialises in freestyle, but also competes in backstroke and the individual medley. He has won five Olympic gold medals, the most won by any Australian, and with three gold and two silver medals, was the most successful athlete at the 2000 Summer Olympics. At the 2001 World Aquatics Championships, he became the first person to win six gold medals in one World Championship. In total, Thorpe has won eleven World Championship golds, the second-highest number of any swimmer. Thorpe was the first person to have been named Swimming World Swimmer of the Year four times, and was the Australian swimmer of the year from 1999 to 2003. His athletic achievements made him one of Australia's most popular athletes, and he was recognised as the Young Australian of the Year in 2000.
At the age of 14, he became the youngest male ever to represent Australia, and his victory in the 400 metre freestyle at the 1998 Perth World Championships made him the youngest ever individual male World Champion. After that victory, Thorpe dominated the 400 m freestyle, winning the event at every Olympic, World, Commonwealth and Pan Pacific Swimming Championships until his break after the 2004 Olympics. Aside from 13 individual long-course world records, Thorpe anchored the Australian relay teams, numbering the victories in the 4 × 100 m and the 4 × 200 m freestyle relays in Sydney, among his five relay world records. His wins in the 200 m and 400 m and his bronze in the 100 m freestyle in Athens have made him the only male to have won medals in the 100–200–400 combination.

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Igor Astarloa
Igor Astarloa Askasibar (born March 29, 1976 in Ermua, Basque Country) is a retired cyclist from Spain.
Astarloa turned professional with the Italian cycling team Mercatone Uno and enjoyed his best season in 2003 with team Saeco Macchine per Caffè when he won the Flèche Wallonne and the road race title at the World Cycling Championships at Hamilton, Canada. During the 2006 transfer season it was announced that he was to leave Team Barloworld, the Continental Circuit team for which Astarloa had ridden for the last several years, and join Team Milram, a member of the UCI ProTour.
Team Milram terminated its contract with Astarloa in May 2008 following disclosures that he had shown "irregular blood values", as reported by Focus magazine. He joined the Amica Chips-Knauf team, which folded in May 2009. Soon after, in June 2009, Astarloa was one of the first five riders to fall foul of the Union Cycliste International's new biological passport system, introduced to combat doping by competitive cyclists. Astarloa was unable to secure another contract that season, and retired in January 2010.

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Ivan Santaromita
Ivan Santaromita (born April 30, 1984 in Varese) is an Italian professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team. He turned professional with Quick Step-Innergetic in 2006 before moving to Liquigas in 2008.

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Jacques Anquetil
Jacques Anquetil (8 January 1934 – 18 November 1987) was a French road racing cyclist and the first cyclist to win the Tour de France five times, in 1957 and from 1961 to 1964. He stated before the 1961 Tour that he would gain the yellow jersey on day one and wear it all through the tour, a tall order with two previous winners in the field—Charly Gaul and Federico Bahamontes—but he did just that. His victories in stage races such as the Tour were built on an exceptional ability to ride alone against the clock in individual time trial stages, which lent him the name "Monsieur Chrono".
Anquetil was:
Anquetil was the son of a builder in Mont-Saint-Aignan, in the hills above Rouen in Normandy, north-west France. He lived there with his parents, Ernest and Marie, and his brother Philippe and then at Boisguillaume in a two-storey house, "one of those houses with exposed beams that tourists think are pretty but those who live there find uncomfortable."
In 1941, his father refused contracts to work on military installations for the German occupiers and his work dried up. Other members of the family worked in strawberry farming and Anquetil's father followed them, moving to the hamlet of Bourguet, near Quincampoix. Anquetil had his first bicycle - an Alcyon - at the age of four and twice a day rode the kilometre and a half to the village and back. There he was taught by a teacher wearing clogs in a classroom heated by a smoking stove.

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Jan Janssen
Johannes Adrianus Janssen, known as Jan Janssen (born 19 May 1940, Nootdorp) is a Dutch former professional cyclist (1962–1973). He was world champion and winner of the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España. He was the first Dutch rider to win the Tour de France and the first to win the Vuelta a España.
Janssen was born at Nootdorp, a small town near The Hague and Delft. He later moved to Putte, a village on the Belgian border between Roosendaal and Antwerp. He rode the Tour de France eight times and finished all but the first time. He won seven stages and wore the yellow jersey for two days (after stage 16 in 1966 and after stage 22B in 1968). He was easily spotted in the peloton because of his blond hair and his glasses.

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Jan Raas
Jan Raas (born November 8, 1952, Heinkenszand) is a Dutch former professional cyclist whose 115 wins include the 1979 World Road Race Championship in Valkenburg, he also won the Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1979 and 1983, Paris–Roubaix in 1982 and Milan – San Remo in 1977. He won ten stages in the Tour de France. In six starts, Raas won the Amstel Gold Race five times.
Raas was a tactician and clever sprinter. He struggled on the long steep climbs but excelled on the short climbs characteristic of the northern classics.
Born in Heinkenszand, near Goes in Zeeland, Raas was the son of a farmer and one of 10 children. He showed no interest in cycling until leaving school at 16 when he acquired his first racing bike and started competing as a junior category, taking his first victory in Damme in Belgium on the 21 July 1969. Further success as an amateur, including stage wins in the Olympia Tour and the national championship, prompted Peter Post, the manager of TI-Raleigh, to offer Raas a contract for 1975

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Jan Ullrich
Jan Ullrich (born 2 December 1973 in Rostock, Germany) is a German former professional road bicycle racer. In 1997, he was the first German to win the Tour de France. He went on to take five second places and a fourth in 2004 as well as 3rd in 2005 (the latter result being declared void in 2012 following his doping ban). He is considered the best time-trialist in the history of the sport. In 2006, Ullrich was barred from the Tour amid speculation of having doped. He retired in late February 2007.
Ullrich won a gold and a silver in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. He also won the 1999 Vuelta a España. Although not a one-day specialist, he won the HEW Cyclassics in front of a home crowd in Hamburg in 1997, and had podium finishes in the hilly classic Clásica de San Sebastián. His victorious ride in the 1997 Tour de France led to a bicycle boom in Germany.
In February 2012, Ullrich was found guilty of a doping offence by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He was retroactively banned from August 22, 2011, and all results gained since May 2005 were also removed from his Palmares.

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Jean Aerts
Jean Aerts (Laken, 8 September 1907 – Bruges, 15 June 1992) was a Belgian road bicycle racer who specialized as a sprinter. Aerts became the first man to win both the world amateur (1927) and professional (1935) road race championships. In 1935, Aerts captured first place and the gold medal at the professional UCI Road World Championships in Floreffe, Belgium.
In 1927, professional and amateur riders rode concurrently at the Nürburgring in Germany and Aerts finished 5th, the highest ranked amateur.
Although he lacked climbing ability for major tours, he used his sprinting ability to win 11 stages of the Tour de France, including six in 1933.

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Jean Robic
Jean Robic (born 10 June 1921 in Vouziers, Ardennes – died Claye-Souilly, 6 October 1980) was a French road racing cyclist, who won the 1947 Tour de France. Robic was a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961. His diminutive stature (1.61m, 60 kg) and appearance was encapsulated in the nickname the hobgoblin of the Brittany moor. For faster, gravity assisted, descents he collected drinking bottles ballasted with lead or mercury at the summits of mountain climbs and "cols". After fracturing his skull in 1944 he always wore a trademark leather crash helmet.
Robic has always been described as a Breton but he was born in the Ardennes region of France, where his father had found work as a carpenter.
his father having lived in Brittany before he moved. His father was a racing cyclist and passed the interest to his son. Robic moved to Brittany when he was seven and lived at Radenac. His childhood home is in a street now named for him.
Robic moved to Paris In February 1940 and became a cycle mechanic for the Sausin company. He started racing but made a poor impression on journalists. René de Latour of Sporting Cyclist wrote:

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Jean Stablinski
Jean Stablewski, known as Jean Stablinski (born 21 May 1932, Thun-Saint-Amand, France, d. 22 July 2007) was a French professional cyclist from a family of Polish immigrants. He rode from 1952 to 1968, winning 105 races as a professional. He won the national road championship four times - 1960, 1962, 1963 and 1964 - the world road championship in 1962, the first Amstel Gold Race, in 1966 and Vuelta a España in 1958.
Jean Stablinski was the son of Polish immigrants in the mining area of the Nord region of France. His father died in a work accident in 1946 and Jean, at 14, started working in the mine to provide for his family. It was at this time that he won a bicycle in an accordion competition. Legend says that his mother was so displeased by her son's new hobby that she damaged his bike.
Jean, still known as Stablewski, became naturalised as French at 16 and rode his first races. It was while riding the Peace Race that a journalist's error in writing his name 'Stablinski' created the surname by which he was known then on.

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Joaquim Rodríguez
Joaquim Rodríguez Oliver (born May 12, 1979 in Parets del Vallès) is a Spanish professional road racing cyclist. He has been competing since 2001, and currently rides for the UCI ProTour team Team Katusha.
Rodríguez was born in Barcelona, the son of an amateur rider in the 1960s, and later lived in Parets del Vallès. Some years later he moved to the Basque country to ride for Iberdrola, an amateur team associated to the professional cycling team ONCE-Eroski.
His nickname in the professional peloton is Purito, Spanish for little cigar, a name he was given in an early season training camp during his first year as a professional with ONCE-Eroski. When some of his teammates stepped up the pace in a small climb, he passed them making a hand gesture appearing to be smoking a cigar, suggesting he was climbing without much effort. The gesture was not welcomed by his teammates, who made him smoke a real cigar as a hazing ritual later in the evening.
In 2001 he turned professional with ONCE-Eroski after riding for the team in late 2000 as a stagiaire. In 2001, during his first season as a professional, he won the Escalada a Montjuïc, a race held in Barcelona. In 2003 he won the sixth stage of the Paris–Nice, while he also won team time trials with ONCE-Eroski at the Volta a Catalunya and Vuelta a España.

wn.com/Joaquim_Rodríguez

Johan Museeuw
Johan Museeuw (born 13 October 1965 in Varsenare) is a retired Belgian professional road bicycle racer. He was a professional from 1988 to 2004 and was particularly successful in the classic cycle races in the nineties.
Museeuw is the winner of 11 World Cup races, including six victories in "Monument" events:
He won the World Cup in 1995 & 1996. He was also the Belgian Champion in 1992 & 1996.
Museeuw won the World Cycling Championship in the road race in Lugano 1996. In that year, he also won the UCI Road World Cup, the only rider in history to accomplish both in the same year.
Museeuw also won the following classics and semi-classics:
Museeuw's father Eddy rode as a pro for two seasons without much success. Johan started his professional career in 1988 with ADR. In 1989 he was part of the ADR team in which Greg LeMond won his second Tour de France. In 1990 Museeuw went to the Lotto team for which he won two stages in the Tour de France that year. Later on he rode for the MG-GB, Mapei, Domo-Farm Frites and Quick-Step. He ended his career in the spring of 2004.

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Johan van der Velde
Johan van der Velde (born 12 December 1956 in Rijsbergen, North Brabant) is a former Dutch cyclist. In the 1980 Tour de France he won the Maillot blanc, or white jersey, for being the best young rider under 25, also placing 12th overall that year. He had been a racing cyclist for only a year. In the 1981 Tour de France he took first place on the second and 21st stages, finishing 12th overall for the second year. He rode with TI-Raleigh in the Tour de France from 1979 to 1983, and Panasonic in 1986.
He was distinctive in the peloton for his lean, long-legged appearance, his smooth pedalling style and his long hair. He rode in support of riders such as Joop Zoetemelk, whom he could pace over mountains at impressive speed, but he was also capable of winning on his own. Success came to him early and, he said in an interview with the author Jan Siebelink ("Pijn is genot") that he had trouble coping when that success began to dry up. Van der Velde said he remembered shivering at the start of an Italian race, the skin of his arms wrinkled in goosebumps, because of the amphetamine he had taken just to start.

wn.com/Johan_van_der_Velde

Johann Tschopp
Johann Tschopp (born July 1, 1982 in Sierre) is a Swiss professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team. He has been a professional since 2004 with Phonak Hearing Systems, during which time he has raced twice in the Giro d'Italia. He is an especially good climber since he is lightweight (1.75 m, 60 kg) and his training environment is mainly mountainous. He has already a quite important record in cyclo-cross and mountain bike marathon.

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Joop Zoetemelk
Hendrik Gerardus Jozef "Joop" Zoetemelk (born 3 December 1946, Rijpwetering) is a retired professional racing cyclist from the Netherlands who has emigrated to France. He started the Tour de France 16 times and finished every time, a record. He won the race in 1980 and also came eighth, fifth, fourth (three times) and second (six times). He won the world professional road championship in 1985 at 38. He retired from the sport to run a hotel at Meaux, near Paris, France.
Joop Zoetemelk started work as a carpenter. He became a speed-skater and a regional champion before turning to cycling in 1964. He joined the Swift club in Leiden and made a fast impression, winning youth races in his first season. He rode particularly well as a senior in multi-day races. He won the Tour of Yugoslavia, the Circuit des Mines, three stages and the mountains prize in the Tour of Austria, and the 1969 Tour de l'Avenir. He also won a gold medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City in the 100 km team time-trial with Fedor den Hertog, Jan Krekels and René Pijnen.

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Julia Gillard
Julia Eileen Gillard (born 29 September 1961) is the 27th and current Prime Minister of Australia, in office since 24 June 2010.
Gillard was born in Barry, Wales and migrated with her family to Adelaide, Australia in 1966, attending Mitcham Demonstration School and Unley High School. In 1982 Gillard moved to Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws degrees in 1986. In 1987, Gillard joined the law firm Slater & Gordon working in industrial law, before entering politics.
Gillard was elected at the 1998 federal election to the House of Representatives seat of Lalor, Victoria, for the Australian Labor Party. Following the 2001 federal election, Gillard was elected to the shadow cabinet with the portfolios of Population and Immigration. The Reconciliation and Indigenous Affairs and the Health portfolios were added in 2003. In December 2006, Kevin Rudd was elected Labor leader and Leader of the Opposition, with Gillard as deputy leader.

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Karel Kaers
Karel Kaers, born in Vosselaar, Belgium, 3 June 1914 – died Antwerp, 20 December 1972 was a professional cyclist with 30 wins. In 1934 he became the youngest world road champion, winning in Leipzig at 20. It was the first time he had ridden the race. He also won the Ronde van Vlaanderen in 1939, and the Belgian national championship in 1937.
His last race was on the track at Ordrup, near Copenhagen, Denmark, on 9 May 1948. He finished fourth in an omnium competition.
Lance Armstrong is frequently described as the youngest world champion. In fact, he was only the third youngest road champion when he took the rainbow jersey in Oslo in 1993. Armstrong was two weeks short of 22; Kaers had just turned 20. Jean-Pierre Monseré was three weeks short of 22 when he became champion in Leicester on 16 August 1970.
Karel Kaers started racing at 14 and won 37 events in his first two years, including the Belgian boys' championship on the road. He became a junior in 1931 and won the national sprint championship. He became an independent, or semi-professional, and then a full professional in 1932, riding mainly on the track until 1934.

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Klaas Lodewyck
Klaas Lodewyck (born 24 March 1988) is a professional Belgian road cyclist, currently riding for BMC Racing Team.

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Lance Armstrong
Lance Edward Armstrong (born Lance Edward Gunderson on September 18, 1971) is an American former professional road racing cyclist who won the Tour de France a record seven consecutive times after having survived testicular cancer. He is also the founder and chairman of the Lance Armstrong Foundation for cancer research and support. He last rode for UCI ProTeam Team RadioShack, a team he helped found.
In October 1996 he was diagnosed as having testicular cancer with a tumor that had metastasized to his brain and lungs. His cancer treatments included brain and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy, and his prognosis was originally poor. He went on to win the Tour de France each year from 1999 to 2005, and is the only person to win seven times having broken the previous record of five wins shared by Miguel Indurain, Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx, and Jacques Anquetil.
In 1999, he was named the ABC Wide World of Sports Athlete of the Year. In 2000 he won the Prince of Asturias Award in Sports. In 2002, Sports Illustrated magazine named him Sportsman of the Year. He was also named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year for the years 2002–2005. He received ESPN's ESPY Award for Best Male Athlete in 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, and won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Overseas Personality Award in 2003. Armstrong announced his retirement from racing on July 24, 2005, at the end of the 2005 Tour de France but returned to competitive cycling in January 2009 and finished third in the 2009 Tour de France. He confirmed he had retired from competitive cycling for good on February 16, 2011.

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Laurent Brochard
Laurent Brochard (born on March 26, 1968 in Le Mans, France) is a retired professional road racing cyclist from France. In 1997 he won a stage of the Tour de France and became world road champion in San Sebastián, Spain.
Brochard was a runner and started cycling competitively at 19. He started with Castorama and became part of Festina cycling team. His role in Festina was super-domestique, supporting stars such as Richard Virenque but able to ride competitively when given the chance. He was implicated in the Festina scandal in the 1998 Tour de France.
After serving his suspension, Brochard joined Ag2r Prévoyance as leader and had successes in races such as Critérium International and Etoile de Béssèges. He then moved to Bouygues Télécom.
He is a fan of French comic character Marsupilami, often wearing Marsupilami logo and clothing at races.

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Laurent Fignon
Laurent Patrick Fignon (12 August 1960 – 31 August 2010) was a French professional road bicycle racer. He won the Tour de France in 1983 and in 1984. He missed winning it a third time, in 1989, by 8 seconds, the closest margin ever to decide the tour. He also won the Giro d'Italia in 1989, after having been the runner-up in 1984, and the classic race Milan – San Remo in 1988 and 1989. He died from cancer on 31 August 2010.
Fignon was born in Montmartre, Paris. His family moved to Tournan-en-Brie in 1963, where he lived until he left for Paris at age 23.
His first sport was football and he got as far as playing for his département or area. Friends encouraged him into cycling and he rode his first official race in 1976, which he won. Fignon's parents did not want him to race, and he raced without them knowing. He won four more races in his first year, but only one in his second year. In this third year, he won 18 out of 36 races. Fignon's parents allowed him to race, but still thought that he should study. Fignon entered the University of Villetaneuse, doing Structural and Materials Science. This study did not go too well, and he left soon. He joined the army, and was posted at the Bataillon de Joinville, known for its sporting reputation. After this, Fignon was sure he wanted to pursue a professional career.

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Laurent Jalabert
Laurent Jalabert (born November 30, 1968 in Mazamet) is a French former professional road racing cyclist, from 1989 to 2002. Affectionately known as "Jaja" (slang for a glass of wine; when he continued drinking wine as a professional, the nickname stuck because of the similarity to his name), he won many one-day and stage races and was ranked number 1 in the 1990s. Although he never won the Tour de France, where he suffered altitude sickness, he won the Vuelta a España in 1995; as well as the leader's jersey, he won the sprinter's jersey and climber's jersey all in the same race - only the second rider to have done this in a Grand Tour. With Alessandro Petacchi, Eddy Merckx and Djamolidine Abdoujaparov, he is one of only four riders to win the points classification in all three grand tours.
He turned professional with the French Toshiba team in 1989 and quickly established himself as a daring sprinter. He moved on to the Spanish ONCE team under Manolo Saiz, where he reinvented himself as an all-rounder capable of winning one-day races and the tours.

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Learco Guerra
Learco Guerra (October 14, 1902 - February 7, 1963) was an Italian professional road racing cyclist. The highlight of his career was his overall win in the 1934 Giro d'Italia.
Laearco Guerra, born in a frazione of Bagnolo San Vito in Lombardy, gained the nickname of "Human Locomotive" for his enduring quality in plain stages. After mediocre attempts to play football, Guerra became a professional cyclist in 1928, at 26. The following year he became Italian champion, racing as an independent or semi-professional.
In 1930 he won his first Italian National Road Race Championships, the first of five straight wins. That same year he came second in the Tour de France after Italy's leader, Alfredo Binda, proved in poor form. The race was won by the Frenchman, André Leducq. In 1931 Guerra won four stages of the Giro d'Italia but not the final victory. The same year he won the world cycling championship.
In 1933 Guerra was again second in the Tour de France, and he won the Milan – San Remo. In 1934 came his greatest success, 10 stages of the Giro d'Italia and the general classification. He was also second in the world championship.

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Louis Trousselier
Louis Trousselier (1881 - April 24, 1939) was a French racing cyclist.
He was born in Levallois-Perret (Hauts de Seine) in 1881; some sources say on January 29, others June 29. He died in Paris on April 24, 1939.
He is most famous for his 1905 victory in the 1905 Tour de France. His other major wins were Paris–Roubaix, also in 1905, and the 1908 Bordeaux–Paris. He came third in the 1906 Tour de France and won 13 stages of the Tour de France over his career.
Trousselier, known as Trou-Trou, came from a rich family which had a flower business in central Paris. For that reason, when Henri Desgrange, the first organiser of the Tour, sought to popularise competitors by giving them nicknames, he referred to Trousselier as "the florist".
Trousselier's brothers Léopold and André were also racers but they never had the success of Louis, who was only 18 when he won Paris–Roubaix-Antwerp against the stars of the day. He rode his first Tour de France in 1905, taking a few days' official leave from his service as a soldier and depending on doing well to save himself from too strong a penalty - potentially as a deserter - when he got back much later. He dominated the race winning five stages, completing the 3,021 km in 110 hours 26 minutes and 58 second at an average speed of 27.48 km. He won win 35 points ahead of Hippolyte Aucouturier (61 pts) and Jean-Baptiste Dortignacq(64pts). Victory brought him all his prizes, contracts to ride all over France and a bonus from his sponsor. But that night, in a trackside cabin in Paris, he lost the whole lot playing dice with friends.

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Louison Bobet
Louis 'Louison' Bobet (12 March 1925 - 13 March 1983) was a French professional road racing cyclist. He was the first great French rider of the post-war period and the first rider to win the Tour de France in three successive years, from 1953 to 1955. His career included the national road championship (1950 and 1951), Milan – San Remo (1951), Giro di Lombardia (1951), Critérium International (1951 & 52), Paris–Nice (1952), Grand Prix des Nations (1952), world road championship (1954), Ronde van Vlaanderen (1955), Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré (1955), Tour de Luxembourg (1955), Paris–Roubaix (1956) and Bordeaux–Paris (1959).
Louis Bobet was born one of three children above his father's baker's shop in the rue de Montfort, Saint-Méen-le-Grand, near Rennes. His father gave him a bicycle when he was two and after six months he could ride it 6 km. Bobet's father was also called Louis and the son was called Louison - little Louis - to avoid confusion The ending -on is a diminutive in French but outside Brittany Louison refers more usually to a girl. He was known as Louis in his early years as a rider, even as a professional, until the diminutive Louison gained in popularity.

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Luc Leblanc
Luc Leblanc (born on August 4, 1966 in Limoges, France) is a retired professional male cyclist from France. In 1994 he became World Road Champion.
In 1978, a drunk driver hit Luc Leblanc, aged 11, and his younger brother Gilles Leblanc, aged 8. Gilles died after the accident, while Luc had to stay in the hospital for six months. After many operations, Luc could walk again, although his left leg was 3 cm shorter than his right leg, and also weaker.
Initially, Leblanc wanted to become a priest, but after a physiotherapist's advice to take up cycling to solve his leg problems, and subsequently Raymond Poulidor's advice to become a professional cyclist, he did not become a priest.
At the 1991 Tour de France, in the 12th stage Leblanc joined the decisive attack together with Charly Mottet and Pascal Richard. Mottet won the stage, but they finished 7 minutes ahead of the classification leader LeMond, which meant that Leblanc was the new leader. The next day, Leblanc finished 12 minutes behind the winner, and lost the lead to Miguel Indurain, who would remain the leader until the end of the race.

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Lucien Aimar
Lucien Aimar (born 28 April 1941 in Hyères, Var) is a French cyclist, who won the Tour de France in 1966 and the national road championship in 1968. He is now a race organizer. He was born in Hyères, France.
Lucien Aimar came second in the Tour de l'Avenir in 1964, 42 seconds behind the Italian, Felice Gimondi. But for a one-minute penalty for an incident involving a Belgian rider, Aimar would have won. Later that year he rode the Olympic Games road race in Tokyo.
Aimar turned professional in 1965 for Ford-Gitane, a team led by Jacques Anquetil. He made sufficient impression for the manager, Raphael Géminiani, to pick him for the Tour de France in his first season. Aimar abandoned the race while climbing the col de l'Aubisque in the Pyrenees on the ninth stage.
Aimar won Genoa-Nice at the start of the season, came second on the Flèche Wallonne and won the Tour de France. His victory was based on an attack on the Aubisque, where he had pulled out the previous year, and on another attack in Turin. Each was followed by fast descending, at which he was talented. He also benefited from the support of Jacques Anquetil, riding his last Tour de France. Anquetil ensured that his team would ride in Aimar's support and then left the race. Aimar finished 1:17 ahead of the Dutchman, Jan Janssen and Anquetil's French rival, Raymond Poulidor. His season ended with ninth place in the world championship on the Nürburgring in West Germany. His ride was criticised, however, for help that he gave to the German, Rudi Altig. Aimar chased a breakaway group that included Jacques Anquetil, his partner in the French team, and took Altig with him. Altig won the title and Anquetil came second.

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Lucien Buysse
Lucien Buysse (11 September 1892 – 3 January 1980) was a Belgian cyclist and a champion of the Tour de France.
Born in Wontergem, Buysse began racing professionally in 1914, when he entered the Tour de France but did not finish. He resumed his career after World War I, entering but abandoning the Tour again in 1919 but placing third in the Paris–Roubaix classic in 1920. In 1923 he completed the Tour de France and finished in eighth place. In the 1924 and 1925 Tours, he rode with the Italian Automoto team led by Ottavio Bottecchia, where he was perhaps the first domestique in the history of the Tour. He placed third in 1924 and second in 1925.
The 1926 Tour was the longest in its history (5,745 km), with 17 stages averaging 338 km. Buysse, racing with his two brothers Jules and Michel, took the yellow jersey from Gustave Van Slembrouck on stage 10 by attacking during a furious storm on the Col d'Aspin in the Pyrenees. He gained almost an hour during the stage over his team leader Bottecchia who then abandoned. Buysse arrived in Paris as the champion despite suffering the loss of his daughter during the race.

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Lucien Van Impe
Lucien van Impe (born 20 October 1946 in Mere, Belgium) was a Belgian cyclist from 1969 to 1987. He excelled mainly as a climber in multiple-day races such as the Tour de France. He was the winner of the 1976 Tour de France, and six times winner of the mountains classification in the Tour de France.
Van Impe credits the start of his career to Spaniard Federico Bahamontes, a climber nicknamed the eagle of Toledo and a former Tour de France winner. In 1968 van Impe was King of the Mountains in the Tour de l'Avenir. Bahamontes used his influence to get van Impe a contract as a professional. In 1969, Van Impe started his professional career with a 12th place in the 1969 Tour de France. In 1971, Van Impe won his first Mountains classification in the Tour de France. He would repeat that five more times, a record then shared with Bahamontes. When Richard Virenque broke the record with a seventh victory in 2004, Van Impe criticized Virenque for being opportunistic rather than the best climber; he said he had himself refrained from breaking Bahamontes' record himself out of reverence.

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Luis Ocaña
Jesús Luis Ocaña Pernía (9 June 1945 – 19 May 1994) was a Spanish road bicycle racer who won the Tour de France in 1973 and the Vuelta a España in 1970.
Ocaña was born in Priego, Cuenca, Spain but his family moved to Mont-de-Marsan (Landes, France) in 1957. Ocaña took up racing in with a club in Mont-de-Marsan and began his professional career in 1968 with the Spanish Fagor team, becoming Spanish champion that year. The following year he won the prologue and two time trials, the mountains classification as well as finishing second in the Vuelta a España.
In 1970, Ocaña signed with the French team Bic. In the 1970 Vuelta a España, he battled with Augustín Tamames, losing the leader's jersey to him on the 13th stage. Ocaña time-trialled back into the jersey on the final day and won his first Grand Tour with one minute and 18 seconds over Tamames. The Spanish newspaper Dicen said Ocaña was "the best time-trialist that Spanish cycling has ever had". In the 1970 Tour de France, Ocaña won the stage to Puy-de-Dôme and finished 31st in the Tour.

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Léon Scieur
Léon Scieur (19 March 1888 in Florennes – 7 October 1969 in Florennes) was a Belgian cyclist who won the 1921 Tour de France, along with stages 3 and 10. His first great victory was the 1920 Liège–Bastogne–Liège; he won a stage and finished fourth in the 1919 and 1920 Tours de France.
Léon Scieur was the son of a farmer in Florennes, near Charleroi in Belgium. He began work as a glassmaker before being introduced to cycling by his neighbour, Firmin Lambot, who taught him to ride a bike at the age of 22.
Scieur turned professional in 1913 and rode his first Tour de France that year, without finishing. He didn't win in 1914 either - he came 14th - but Florennes celebrated nevertheless because Philippe Thys won for the second time. Thys was born in Brussels but lived in the town. Firmin Lambot came eighth.
After working as a mechanic in World War I Scieur rode the revived Tour de France in 1919 placing in fourth. He had punctured four or six times, according to reports, between Le Havre and Cherbourg. The weather was foul and he had no more spares so had to huddle in a doorway to repair one of the punctures. Mending a race tyre involved taking it from the rim, cutting the stitching that held the base together, mending the inner tube, then sewing up the tyre before replacing it. Scieur had acquired a needle and thick thread from the woman in whose doorway he was sheltering but his fingers grew too cold to use them. He asked the woman to help but the chief official, Lucien Cazalis, told him: "It's forbidden to receive help; you'll be penalised if madame threads the needle for you." Scieur completed the repair but lost the Tour to Lambot by about the time it had taken. He rode three more years after his victory but without finishing. He came fourth again in 1920, once more behind Thys.

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Manuel Quinziato
Manuel Quinziato (born October 30, 1979 in Bolzano) is an Italian professional road racing cyclist who rides for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.

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Marcel Kint
Marcel Kint (Zwevegem, 20 September 1914 – Kortrijk, 23 March 2002) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer who won 31 races between 1935 and 1951. His finest year was 1938 when he won the World Cycling Championship, three stages of the Tour de France and the season-long competition equivalent to today's UCI ProTour.
He specialized in one-day classic cycle races and won Paris–Roubaix, Gent–Wevelgem, Paris–Brussels. He is the only three-time consecutive winner of La Flèche Wallonne.

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Marco Pantani
Marco Pantani (13 January 1970 – 14 February 2004) was an Italian road racing cyclist, widely considered one of the best climbers in professional road bicycle racing. He won both the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia in 1998, being the first Italian since Felice Gimondi in 1965 to win the Tour de France. He is the last cyclist to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year.
His attacking style and aggressive riding turned him into a fan favorite in the late 1990s. He was known as 'Il Pirata' because of his shaved head and the bandana and earrings he always wore. At 1.72 m and 57 kg, Marco Pantani had the classic build for a mountain climber. His style contrasted with that of time-trialling experts such as the five-times Tour winner Miguel Indurain.
Despite the fact that he never tested positive, his career was beset by doping allegations. In the 1999 Giro d'Italia, he was expelled due to his irregular blood values. Although he was disqualified for "health reasons", it was implied that Pantani's high haematocrit was the product of EPO use. Following later accusations, Pantani went into a depression from which he never fully recovered. He died of acute cocaine poisoning in 2004.

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Marco Pinotti
Marco Pinotti (born 25 February 1976 in Osio Sotto, Lombardy) is an Italian road racing cyclist for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team. Pinotti is a specialist of individual time trial, in which he is a five-time Italian Time Trial Champion (2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010).
As an amateur he won 28 races and he turned professional in 1999 with the Lampre-Daikin team. He won the Grand Prix d'Europa in 1999 together with his teammate Raivis Belohvoščiks and he won the 5th stage of the 2000 Tour de Pologne.
In 2001 he finished second in stage 15 of the Tour de France behind Belgian Rik Verbrugghe. He had surgery on his ulna in November 2001 and started training again only in February 2002. He returned to competition in April 2002.
The 2003 season brought some victories as he won the 4th stage in the Vuelta al País Vasco and the King of the Mountains classification. In the Bici Vasca he crashed and broke his pelvis, forcing recuperation. He has since fully recovered. His speciality is in individual time trials.

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Marcus Burghardt
Marcus Burghardt (born June 30, 1983 in Zschopau, Saxony) is a German professional road bicycle racer, currently riding for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.
Burghardt turned pro in 2005, having already raced as an amateur in the U-23 Wiesenhof team, with which he had already tasted success in the shape of the overall win at the Bundesliga Gerlingen in 2004. Burghardt won the UCI ProTour race Gent–Wevelgem in 2007, ahead of teammate Roger Hammond. He has also performed well in some races such as the Dwars door Vlaanderen and some stages of the Vuelta a España.
Burghardt gained a bit of notoriety on Stage 9 of the 2007 Tour de France when he hit a dog while on the course. He was also successful in winning Stage 18 of the 2008 Tour de France into Saint Etienne, beating break-away compatriot Carlos Barredo.
Burghardt signed with BMC Racing Team for the 2010 season.

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Mariano Piccoli
Mariano Piccoli (born September 11, 1970 in Trento) is an Italian former road bicycle racer.

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Marino Basso
Marino Basso (born 1 June 1945) is an Italian former professional road racing cyclist, who won the World Cycling Championship in 1972.
Basso was born at Rettorgole di Caldogno, in the Veneto. He was one of the main sprinters of 1970s, often duelling with Belgians Patrick Sercu, Guido Reybroeck and Roger de Vlaeminck, and fellow Italian Dino Zandegù.
Basso won a total of 15 stages at the Giro d'Italia, 6 at the Tour de France and 6 at the Vuelta a España. He was Giro d'Italia's points classification winner in 1971 and the Italian national champion in 1972.
He is not related to Italian cyclist Ivan Basso.
After his professional career, Basso became team leader, currently at Preti Mangimi.

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Mario Cipollini
Mario Cipollini (CHIP-oh-LEE-nee) (born 22 March 1967 in Lucca, Tuscany), often abbreviated to "Cipo", is a retired Italian professional road cyclist most noted for his sprinting ability, the longevity of his dominance (his first pro win came in 1989, his last in 2005; 191 victories in all) and his colourful personality. His nicknames include Il Re Leone (The Lion King) and Super Mario. He is regarded as one of the best sprinters of his generation.
Cipollini's career highlights include the Road World Championships and Milan – San Remo in 2002, and 42 stages in the Giro d'Italia. Cipollini's 42nd Giro stage win in 2003 - his last stage win in that race - broke the record by Alfredo Binda that had stood since 1933. He also won 12 stages in the Tour de France and three stages in the Vuelta a España. In the 1999 Tour de France he led the peloton on the fastest stage in the history of the Tour, averaging more than 50 km/h over 194.5 km. In the same Tour, he won 4 stages in a row, setting the post-WWII record for consecutive stage wins. He has also found success in Belgium, winning Gent–Wevelgem in 1992, 1993 and 2002 (record).

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Mark Cavendish
Mark Cavendish MBE (born 21 May 1985) is a Manx professional road racing cyclist who rides for UCI ProTeam Team Sky. He rode for HTC-Highroad prior to its disbandment at the end of the 2011 season. Originally a track cyclist specialising in the madison, points race, and scratch race disciplines, he has competed on the road since 2006, rising to prominence as a sprinter. He is the 2011 Road World Champion and winner of the 2011 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award.
On the track Cavendish won gold in the madison at the 2005 and 2008 World Championshps, with Rob Hayles and Bradley Wiggins respectively and in the scratch race at the 2006 Commonwealth Games riding for Isle of Man.
As a road cyclist he achieved eleven wins in his first professional season, equalling the record held by Alessandro Petacchi. Cavendish has won a total 20 Tour de France stages putting him joint 6th on the all-time list with Nicolas Frantz and 10th on the all-time list of Grand Tour stage winners with 33 victories. Other notable wins include the 2009 Milan – San Remo classic and the points classification in both the 2010 Vuelta a España and the 2011 Tour de France.

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Martin Kohler
Martin Kohler (born July 17, 1985) is a Swiss road racing cyclist, currently riding for the American UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.
He competed in the 2010 Giro d'Italia but had to withdraw in the second stage due to a crash.

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Massimo Strazzer
Massimo Strazzer (born August 17, 1969) was a former Italian professional cyclist. The highlight of his career came with his victory in the Points Classification at the 2001 Giro d'Italia. He retired from cycling in 2004.

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Mathias Frank
Mathias Frank (born December 9, 1986 in Roggliswil) is a Swiss road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team. He is a good climber and is also strong in the hills.

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Maurice De Waele
Maurice De Waele (27 December 1896 Lovendegem – 14 February 1952 Maldegem) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer.
De Waele placed 2nd in the 1927 Tour, an hour and fifty eight minutes Nicolas Frantz and 3rd in 1928, again won by Frantz. However, he is most famous for winning the 1929 Tour de France. He led the Tour until stage seven when two punctures on the way to Bordeaux cost him the yellow jersey to no less than three other rides on the same time in the general classification, Frantz, Andre Leducq and Victor Fontan. Fontan was the sole leader of the race when a broken bike led to his retirement, leaving De Waele in the lead, seventy five seconds ahead of Frantz. However, punctures to De Waele gave the lead to his nearest rival until he too suffered the same problem. With Frantz out of the running for the title, sickness in Grenoble nearly cost him too but with help from his teammates, he was led to victory.
After winning the 1929 Tour, the organiser, Henri Desgrange despaired so much of the trickery that he thought had let such a minor rider succeed that he abandoned commercially sponsored teams and ran the Tour for national teams for two decades. Desgrange had until then insisted that while riders could compete in the name of their sponsors, cooperation or tactics between those riders was not allowed. They were to consider everyone their rival and ride against them whether they had the same sponsor or not.

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Maurice Garin
Maurice-Francois Garin (3 March 1871, Arvier, Aosta Valley, Italy – 19 February 1957, Lens or Haute-Savoie,France) was a road bicycle racer best known for winning the inaugural Tour de France in 1903, and for being stripped of his title in the second Tour in 1904 along with eight others, for cheating.
Garin was born the son of Maurice Clément Garin and Maria Teresa Ozello in the Aosta Valley in north-west Italy, close to the French border. The name Garin was the most common in the village, which was French-speaking, belonging to five of the seven families. They married in 1864 when he was a 36-year-old labourer and she a 19-year-old employee of the town's hotel. They had four daughters and five sons, of whom two were twins. Maurice was the first son. The cottage in which he was born, now a ruin, still exists.
In 1885 the family left Arvier to work on the other side of the Alps. The wish for a better life is a likely explanation but does not suggest why they travelled so far, almost to the Belgian border. Speculation surrounds the move, possibly because it was in secret. To emigrate needed authority and mayors had been told by the sub-prefect of Aoste to refuse or at least make permission difficult. If the family travelled separately, it would explain the legend that Maurice, then 14, was exchanged for a round of cheese: it could have been payment to a guide to lead him clandestinely over the mountains or payment in return for custody of the son.

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Maurizio Fondriest
Maurizio Fondriest (born 15 January 1965) is a retired Italian professional road racing cyclist.
Born in Cles, Trentino, Fondriest turned professional in 1987 with the Ecoflam team. He subsequently rode for Alfa-Lum in 1988, winning the World Cycling Championships along with stages in the Tour de Suisse and Tirreno–Adriatico. In 1991, riding for Panasonic, he won the UCI Road World Cup. In 1993, riding for the Lampre team, he won Milan – San Remo, La Flèche Wallonne, the Züri-Metzgete, the Giro dell'Emilia, the general classification and two stages of Tirreno–Adriatico, three stages and the general classification of the Grand Prix du Midi Libre, a stage in the Giro d'Italia and the overall World Cup. He would never again have such a successful season, although he had another successful season with Lampre in 1995 he won a stage in the Giro d'Italia and came in second in a number of races (the Tirreno–Adriatico general classification, Milan – San Remo, Gent–Wevelgem, La Flèche Wallonne, and a stage in the Giro d'Italia).

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Mauro Santambrogio
Mauro Santambrogio (born October 7, 1984 in Erba) is an Italian professional road racing cyclist for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.

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Michael Schär
Michael Schär (born September 29, 1986 in Geuensee) is a Swiss professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.
He has competed in the 2009 Vuelta a España, the 2010 Giro d'Italia and the 2011 Tour de France.

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Michele Bartoli
Michele Bartoli (born Pisa 27 May 1970) is a retired Italian road racing cyclist. He was a single-day race specialist, winning three of the five Monument races. Bartoli won the UCI Road World Cup in 1997 and 1998.
Bartoli turned professional in 1992 with Mercatone Uno-Medeghini-Zucchini and in 1995 moved to the MG-Technogym team of Giancarlo Ferretti. In 1998, Bartoli signed for Asics. In summer 1998, Bartoli joined Mapei. After the Tour de France, won by Marco Pantani, Mapei showed interest in contracting Pantani, and Asics went for another sponsor, but Bartoli left and joined Mapei from 1999 to 2001.
In 1997 and 1998, Bartoli won UCI Road World Cup. From 10 October 1998 to 6 June 1999, Bartoli led the UCI Road World Rankings. During these years, Bartoli was helped by Paolo Bettini, with whom Bartoli had worked in the MG-Technogym and Asics teams. Bettini kept improving. After a crash in the 1999 Tour of Germany, Bartoli was injured and Bettini rose to prominence, winning Liège–Bastogne–Liège. From that moment, both demanded a leading role. Although they worked together at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, the feud culminated in the 2001 world championship during which the two refused to collaborate, which contributed to Óscar Freire of Spain winning the world title.

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Michele Ferrari

Michele Ferrari (born March 26, 1953) is an Italian physician, cycling coach and author.
Ferrari was born in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna, where he still lives. After an early career researching and publishing papers concerning the anaerobic threshold of various athletes, he settled on his lifelong interest in the development of training programmes for professional cyclists.
One of Ferrari's earliest successes was coaching Francesco Moser to achieve the hour record in 1984, crushing the great Eddy Merckx's mark by more than a mile.
Initially Ferrari worked with Prof. Francesco Conconi in Ferrara, who developed testing techniques for human performance, using methods such as monitoring the heart rate during exercise and recovery. Another controversial Italian doctor, Luigi Cecchini, is their common disciple. They have shared the care for some cyclists throughout their careers.
From 1984 onwards Ferrari achieved extraordinary improvements in the fitness of many cyclists. Ferrari populised the use of VAM, a parameter now used in cycling as a measure of fitness and speed.

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Michele Scarponi
Michele Scarponi (born September 25, 1979 in Filottrano) is an Italian professional road bicycle racer, currently riding for UCI ProTeam Lampre-ISD.
In 2006, Scarponi was implicated in the Operación Puerto doping case. Despite this, and Scarponi's Liberty Seguros-Würth cycling team folding, Scarponi was able to secure a contract with Acqua & Sapone.
Despite a promising start to the 2007 season, Scarponi was once again implicated in the Operación Puerto case. On May 8, 2007, Scarponi confessed his role in the case. On May 15, Scarponi was provisionally suspended.
With the rider completing his ban, Diquigiovanni-Androni announced on June 13, 2008 that they had signed Scarponi for the coming two seasons. In 2010 he finished fourth overall in the Giro d'Italia, and in 2011 second overall behind Alberto Contador. Contador was later stripped from the title, which was therefore assigned to Scarponi.

wn.com/Michele_Scarponi

Miguel Indurain
Miguel Indurain Larraya (born 16 July 1964) is a retired Spanish road racing cyclist. He won five consecutive Tours de France from 1991 and 1995, the first to do so, and the fourth athlete to win five times. He won the Giro d'Italia twice, becoming one of only seven people in history to achieve the Giro Tour double in the same season. He wore the race leader's yellow jersey in the Tour de France for 60 days. Indurain's ability and physical size—1.88 m (6 ft 2 in) and 80 kg (176 lbs)—earned him the nickname "Miguelón" or "Big Mig". He was the youngest rider ever to win the Spanish amateur national road championship, when he was 18, at 20 the youngest rider to lead the Vuelta a España, and at 20 he won a stage of the Tour de l'Avenir.
Miguel Indurain was born in the village of Villava, which is now an outlying area of Pamplona. He has three sisters – Isabel, Maria Dolores and Maria Asuncion – and a brother, Prudencio, who also became a professional cyclist. His first bicycle was a green secondhand Olmo given to him for his 10th birthday. It was stolen when he was 11 and he worked in the fields with his father to pay for a new one. He tried running, basketball, javelin and soccer from nine to 14. Then he joined the local CC Villaves and rode his first race in July 1978, an event for unlicensed riders in which he came second. He won his second race and competed every week thereafter. His hero in cycling was Bernard Hinault. At 18 he was the youngest winner of the national amateur road championship.

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Moreno Argentin
Moreno Argentin (born 17 December 1960) is an Italian former professional cyclist (from 1981 to 1994).
Born in San Donà di Piave (Veneto), he won stages in the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de Suisse. Known as Il Capo ("The Boss"), he won Liège–Bastogne–Liège four times, the La Flèche Wallonne three times and the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Giro di Lombardia once. He became Italian national champion in 1983 and 1989, and world champion in 1986.

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Nicolas Frantz
Nicolas Frantz (November 4, 1899 - November 8, 1985), born in Mamer, Luxembourg, was a bicycle racer with 60 professional racing victories over his 12-year career (1923 to 1934). He rode for the Thomann team in 1923 and then for Alcyon-Dunlop from 1924 to 1931. He won the Tour de France in 1927 and 1928.
Nicolas Frantz was the son of a prosperous farming family. Frantz could have taken over the farm but had no interest in it. In 1914 he rode his first race. He won. That convinced him that farming was not for him. He was close to unbeatable in Luxembourg until the start of the first world war.
Frantz, a well-built man weighing 80 kg, turned professional in 1923. He had immediate success, winning Paris-Lyon and the GP Faber. His advantage in stage races was his consistent health and fitness. He rode the Tour de France for the first time in 1924, won two stages and finished second just 35 minutes and 36 seconds behind Ottavio Bottecchia. In 1925 and 1926 he won another four stages and finished fourth and second respectively.

wn.com/Nicolas_Frantz

Octave Lapize
Octave Lapize (b. Montrouge, 24 October 1887 – d. Toul, 14 July 1917) was a French professional road racing cyclist and track cyclist.
Most famous for winning the 1910 Tour de France and a bronze medal at the 1908 Summer Olympics in the men's 100 kilometres, he was a three-time winner of one-day classics, Paris–Roubaix and Paris–Brussels.
In his first Tour De France in 1909, he abandoned early due to wintery conditions during the month of July, but not before he managed a Stage 2 second place behind Tour winner Francois Faber. The following year he went head-to-head with Alcyon teammate Faber who led comfortably until colliding with a dog at the foot of the Pyrenees. Lapize finally won by just 4 points helped by a number of punctures to Faber's bike on the final stage from Caen to Paris. In a total of six starts in the Tour De France between 1909 and 1914, this victory was the only one he finished.
He is noted for looking at some Tour officials on the climb of the Col du Tourmalet in the 1910 Tour de France and yelling, "Vous êtes des assassins! Oui, des assassins!' (French for 'You are murderers! Yes, murderers!')" The stage in question was 326 kilometers in length, featured 7 brutal climbs, and was raced on unsealed roads with single-gear bicycles.

wn.com/Octave_Lapize

Odile Defraye
Odile Defraye (real name Odiel Defraeye; 14 July 1888, Rumbeke - 21 August 1965) was a Belgian road racing cyclist who won three stages and the overall title of the 1912 Tour de France, which was the last tour decided by a points system instead of overall best time. He was the first Belgian to win the Tour and was only invited to join Alcyon's all-French team at a late stage for publicity purposes.
At the 1913 Tour de France, Defraye held the overall lead after stages 2 through 5 before relinquishing the lead on the Tourmalet to Stage 6 and eventual winner Philippe Thys. He participated in six tours between 1909 and 1924 but his victory Tour was the only one that he completed.
Other major wins include the 1913 Milan – San Remo, a one-day classic, and four stages and the overall for the 1912 Tour of Belgium.

wn.com/Odile_Defraye

Olaf Ludwig
Olaf Ludwig (born 13 April 1960 in Gera, Thuringia) is a former German racing cyclist. His career began at the SG Dynamo Gera/ Sportvereinigung (SV) Dynamo. As an East German, he raced as an amateur until reunification of Germany allowed him to become professional with Panasonic team. As a sprinter, the highlight of his career was winning the maillot vert (green jersey) in the 1990 Tour de France. Other highlights include the Olympic road race in Seoul in 1988, a record 38 stage victories in the Peace Race, winning the Amstel Gold Race in 1992, and podium placings in the Paris–Roubaix. He also won the 1992 UCI Road World Cup. His sprinting rivals included Mario Cipollini, Wilfried Nelissen and Djamolidine Abdoujaparov.
In 1993 he joined Team Telekom, later T-Mobile Team. On retirement in 1996 he took up public relations for the team. He subsequently became principal team manager, but his involvement with the team finished at the end of 2006 .

wn.com/Olaf_Ludwig

Oscar Camenzind
Oscar Camenzind (born 12 September 1971 in Schwyz, Switzerland) is a former professional road racing cyclist from Switzerland. He is national road champion of 1997. In 1998 he won the World Road Championship and the Giro di Lombardia, in 2000 he won the Tour de Suisse and he won Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2001. His career came to an abrupt end when he retired from pro cycling after a positive doping test in July 2004 for erythropoietin, leading into the Athens Olympics. After confessing to the use, "I made the stupidest of mistakes", in 2005 he was sued in Swiss court in order to name his supplier, which he refused to do fearing retribution.

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wn.com/Oscar_Camenzind

Ottavio Bottecchia
Ottavio Bottecchia (born San Martino di Colle Umberto, Italy, 1 August 1894, died Gemona, Italy, 14 June 1927) was an Italian cyclist and the first Italian winner of the Tour de France. He was found dead by the roadside; the reason remains a mystery.
Bottecchia was born to a poor family of nine children. He went to school for just a year and became a bricklayer. He married and had three children. In the first world war he joined the Bersaglieri corps of the Italian army. During the conflict he received a bronze medal.
With the end of hostilities he became an avid competitive cyclist. He won the Giro del Piave, the Coppa della Vittoria, and the Duca D'Aosta in 1920 and the Coppe Gallo a Osimo, the Circuito del Piave and the Giro del Friuli in 1921.
His 5th place finish in the 1923 Giro d'Italia, the leading 'isolate' (rider without a team) attracted the leading French rider, Henri Pélissier, who asked him to join his professional team, Automoto-Hutchinson, in 1922. Pélissier had just left the J. B. Louvet team after an internal row and had taken another rider, Honoré Barthélemy, with him. Automoto was a French company that also sold in Italy. Automoto saw the chance not only of winning the Tour de France but of having a further Italian rider to stimulate foreign sales. Henri Pélissier said he had seen Bottecchia ride the Giro di Lombardia and Milan – San Remo and the team signed him. The new recruit arrived, said the writer Pierre Chany, with a skin tanned like an old leather saddle and creases to his face deep enough to be scars. His clothing was ragged and his shoes so old that they no longer had any shape. His ears stuck out so far that the Tour organiser, Henri Desgrange referred to him as "butterfly".

wn.com/Ottavio_Bottecchia

Paolo Bettini
Paolo Bettini (born 1 April 1974 in Cecina, Livorno, Tuscany) is an Italian former champion road racing cyclist, and the coach of the Italian national cycling team. Considered the best classics specialist of his generation, and probably one of the strongest of all times, he won gold medals in the 2004 Athens Olympics road race and in the 2006 and 2007 World Road Race Championships. He is nicknamed Il Grillo ("the cricket") for his repeated sudden attacks and his sprinting style.
He gained prominence by winning Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2000 and 2002. He set the record for World Cup wins in a season in 2003, winning the Milan – San Remo, HEW Cyclassics and Clásica de San Sebastián. He won the Giro di Lombardia in 2005 and 2006, the Züri-Metzgete in 2001 and 2005 and Tirreno–Adriatico in 2004.
Paolo Bettini lived with his family on the Tuscany coast. He began racing when he was seven and won 23 of his first 24 races. His first bike had a secondhand frame which his father, Giuliano, had painted orange. The components were cannibalised from other bikes. He started racing after the encouragement of his brother.

wn.com/Paolo_Bettini

Pedro Delgado
Pedro Delgado Robledo (born April 15, 1960 in Segovia), also known as Perico, is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer. He won the 1988 Tour de France, as well as the Vuelta a España in 1985 and 1989.
Delgado is 171 centimetres tall (5 ft 7-1/2 in) and used to weigh 64 kilograms (141 lb). He was a good climber, with an aggressive style, making cycling a spectacle, which gained him fans. On one hand, there were days when he was extremely successful attacking. On the other, he occasionally suffered from big losses of time due to mistakes or strokes of bad luck. He was also a good time-trialist until the nineties, when it became difficult for him to adapt to technical changes in the time-trial bicycles.
The ending of the 1987 Tour de France and the 1985 Vuelta a España and the whole 1989 Tour are among his most memorable participations in major competitions.
He works now as a sports commentator for Televisión Española during important cycling events.
Delgado took part in the Tour de France eleven times. During his first participation, when he was 23, he rose to second place in the overall classification after the 17th stage, before falling back later in the event. Since then, Delgado was determined to achieve victory in this competition.

wn.com/Pedro_Delgado

Phil Anderson
Philip Grant Anderson OAM (born 12 March 1958) is an Australian former professional racing cyclist who was the first non-European to wear the yellow jersey of the Tour de France.
Phil Anderson was born in London but moved to Melbourne, Australia, when he was young. He grew up in the suburb of Kew and graduated from Trinity Grammar School in 1975. He first raced with Hawthorn Cycling Club, where Allan Peiper, another future professional, was also a member. Peiper said: "Phil went to a private school and joined the club with his mate, Peter Darbyshire. My best friend was Tom Sawyer, later a six-day racer in Europe, and we were the two rough nuts, while Phil and Darbs were the two upper-class boys".
Anderson, who had a reputation as an amateur for crashing, won the Tour of New Zealand in 1977 and the Australian team time-trial championship at Brisbane in 1978. In that year he also won the Commonwealth Games road race in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He was 19.
He moved to France in 1979 to join the ACBB, a club at Boulogne-Billancourt in the suburbs of Paris with a reputation of placing riders in professional teams, particularly Peugeot. Whilst he was with the ACBB he lived and raced alongside Robert Millar and Mark Bell. That season he won the Tour de l'Essonne, the Tour de l'Hérault and the amateur version of the unofficial world time-trial championship, the Grand Prix des Nations, in Cannes.

wn.com/Phil_Anderson

Philippe Gilbert
Philippe Gilbert (born 5 July 1982 in Remouchamps (Aywaille)) is a Belgian professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTour team BMC Racing Team. Gilbert is a classics specialist. He is the second person (and first Belgian) in history to win all three Ardennes classics in a single year.
Gilbert has won several classic cycle races, including Paris-Tours (2008, 2009), Giro di Lombardia (2009, 2010), Amstel Gold Race (2010, 2011), La Flèche Wallonne (2011), Liège–Bastogne–Liège (2011) and Clásica de San Sebastián (2011). He has also won a stage at the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France and two stages at the Vuelta a España.
Gilbert turned professional in 2003 by joining FDJeux.com after riding as stagiaire for the team in late 2000. During this season he recorded his first victory by winning a stage in Tour de l'Avenir. In 2004 he began by winning a stage in the Tour Down Under as well as the young rider classification. He participated in the men's road race at the 2004 Summer Olympics where he finished 49th. He also won the Paris–Corrèze. In 2005 he won several races in France, which allowed him to win the Coupe de France de cyclisme sur route. These victories included Trophée des Grimpeurs, Tour du Haut-Var and the Polynormande. He also took stages in Four Days of Dunkirk and Tour Méditerranéen.

wn.com/Philippe_Gilbert

Philippe Thys
Philippe Thys (real name Philippe Thĳs; born, Anderlecht, Belgium, 8 October 1889 - died, Anderlecht, Belgium, 16 January 1971) was a Belgian cyclist and three times winner of the Tour de France.
In 1910, Thys won Belgium's first national cyclo-cross championship. The following year he won the Circuit Français Peugeot, followed by stage races from Paris to Toulouse and Paris to Turin. He turned professional to ride the Tour de France.
Thys won the Tour in 1913 despite breaking his bicycle fork and finding a bicycle shop to mend it. The repair cost him a 10-minute penalty but he won by just under nine minutes. Thys took the stage and the race lead when Eugène Christophe broke his fork on the way to Luchon. Marcel Buysse overtook him in the results the following day. Another broken fork on the way to Nice gave Thys the lead again but drama continued when he fell on the penultimate stage from Longwy to Dunkirk. Despite being knocked out and being penalised for help from teammates to repair his bike, he won 8 minutes and 37 seconds ahead of Gustave Garrigou, with Buysse third.

wn.com/Philippe_Thys

René Pottier
René Pottier (5 June 1879 in Moret-sur-Loing, Seine-et-Marne – 25 January 1907 in Levallois-Perret) was a French racing cyclist
Pottier won Bordeaux–Paris in 1903 before turning professional. He came second in Paris–Roubaix 1905 and Bordeaux–Paris 1905, then third in 1906’s Paris–Roubaix, before winning the Tour de France in 1906.
He was considered the finest climber of the Tour. In the 1905 race he was first up the Ballon d’Alsace but lost the lead to Hippolyte Aucouturier after nails punctured his final spare tyre. He finished the stage only when Aucouturier gave him one of his spare tyres. Injury due to a fall on the next stage to Grenoble caused him to abandon.
The following year he took five stage wins out of thirteen and overall victory with 31 points. Again he was first up the Ballon d'Alsace but this time he stayed ahead, finishing as Dijon 48 minutes before his nearest competitor. He also won in Grenoble by fifteen minutes and at Nice by 26 minutes. He completed the 4,546 km in 189 hours, 34 minutes at an average 23.98kmh.

wn.com/René_Pottier

Rik Van Looy
Henri ("Rik") Van Looy (born 20 December 1933 in Grobbendonk) is a Belgian former professional cyclist of the post-war period, nicknamed the King of the Classics or Emperor of Herentals (after the small Belgian town where he lived). He was twice world professional road race champion, and was the first cyclist to win all five of the most prestigious one-day classics – a feat since achieved by just two others (both also Belgians: Roger De Vlaeminck and Eddy Merckx).
Van Looy rose to prominence when he won the Belgian amateur road championship in 1952. He repeated the victory the following year, adding third place in the world title race the same year, before turning professional.
A powerful sprinter, Van Looy won two races in what was left of his first professional season (1953), and 20 more over the next couple of seasons. In 1956, his victories included Gent–Wevelgem and Paris–Brussels, plus two stages and overall victory in the Tour of the Netherlands. He also won a silver medal in the world road race championship, behind his countryman Rik Van Steenbergen. He repeated his Gent–Wevelgem and Tour of the Netherlands victories in 1957, and in 1958 won the season's opening classic, Milan – San Remo.

wn.com/Rik_Van_Looy

Rik Van Steenbergen
Rik Van Steenbergen (Arendonk, 9 September 1924 – Antwerp, 15 May 2003) was a Belgian racing cyclist, considered to be one of the best among the great number of successful Belgian cyclists.
Van Steenbergen was born in Arendonk in a poor family. He worked as an errand boy and a cigar-roller. He began racing at 16 and became one of Belgium's best juniors from 1940 to 1942.
He started cycling as a professional during World War II in 1942, after being an amateur since he was 14. The next year, he won his first important races, and became Belgian road cycling champion. In 1944, he won the Ronde van Vlaanderen Classic, which he won again two years later.
During his career, which lasted until 1966, Van Steenbergen won several more classics: Paris–Roubaix, Paris–Brussels and Milan – San Remo. He also won the World Road Cycling Championships three times (1949 Copenhagen, 1956 Copenhagen and 1957 Waregem), equalling the (still standing) record of Alfredo Binda. His last world title, a year after his second, was won in front of a home crowd. In addition, he placed third in the first post-war championships in 1946. He held the Ruban Jaune for seven years for winning the 1948 Paris-Roubaix in a record average speed for a professional race, covering the 246 km at an average of 43.612 km per hour.

wn.com/Rik_Van_Steenbergen

Roger De Vlaeminck
Roger De Vlaeminck (born 24 August 1947) is a Belgian former professional racing cyclist. He was described by Rik Van Looy as '"The most talented and the only real classics rider of his generation". Nicknamed “The Gypsy” because he was born into a family of travelling clothiers, he is known for exploits in the cobbled classic Paris–Roubaix race, but his performances in other “Monument” races gave him a record that few can match. His record in Paris–Roubaix earned him another nickname, “Monsieur Paris–Roubaix”.
Born in the East Flanders town of Eeklo, De Vlaeminck’s first love was football. He was playing centre forward for F.C. Eeklo when he left school and he could have made a career in the sport, however his elder brother Erik was having success as a pro cyclist and this persuaded Roger to try cycling. He raced as a junior in 1965, gaining one win, but 1966 saw 25 victories. Roger and Erik spent their winters riding cyclo-cross and in 1968 in Luxembourg Erik became world professional champion and Roger the amateur champion on the same day. Roger eventually took the professional title in 1975.

wn.com/Roger_De_Vlaeminck

Roger Lapébie
Roger Lapébie (Bayonne, 16 January 1911 – Pessac, 12 October 1996) was a French racing cyclist who won the 1937 Tour de France. In addition, Lapébie won the 1934 and 1937 editions of the Critérium National. He was born at Bayonne, Aquitaine, and died in Pessac.
Lapébie won the 1937 Tour by riding 4,415 kilometers in 138 hours, 58 minutes and 31 seconds. His victory was controversial as he was the first rider to complete the race using a modern derailleur. This gave him the advantage of shifting gears without having to stop, dismount and flip the wheel as was customary of racing bicycles used at the time. Lapébie was also known to accept outside assistance in violation of the rules and was at one point penalized 90 seconds by race commissaires.
The advantages taken by Lapébie angered his Belgian rival, Sylvère Maes who won the Tour the previous year. Maes had led the race through the Alps and Pyrenees but decided to quit in protest of Lapébie's tactics and derailleur use after the 16th stage to Bordeaux. Lapébie, in second place, took the yellow jersey in the absence of Maes and kept it until Paris. The victory delighted the French but angered the cycling-proud Belgians.

wn.com/Roger_Lapébie

Roger Pingeon
Roger Pingeon (born August 28, 1940 in Hauteville) is a retired professional road bicycle racer from France. He raced as a professional from 1964 to 1974. In 1967, Pingeon won the Tour de France. In 1969, Pingeon won the Vuelta a España and came second behind Eddy Merckx in the Tour de France.

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Roger Walkowiak
Roger Walkowiak (born March 2, 1927 in Montluçon, France) is a French former road bicycle racer who unexpectedly won the 1956 Tour de France. He was a professional rider from 1950 until 1960.
From 1930 the Tour de France had been disputed by national and regional teams. Roger Walkowiak was recruited for the French regional Nord-Est-Centre team, representing the North-east and Centre of France, despite coming from Montluçon in the South-West. He was the only rider available at late notice to replace an original team member, Gilbert Bauvin, who had been promoted to France's main team.
Walkowiak escaped on the 7th stage from Lorient to Angers in a group of 31 riders that won that day by over 18 minutes. The advantage was enough to give him the yellow jersey of the overall race lead. At this stage the race's stars did not consider this 'insignificant' rider to be a risk.
Walkowiak lost the jersey to Gerrit Voorting at the end of stage 10 which took some of the pressure off his shoulders. In the Pyrenees Belgium's Jan Adriaensens took the lead. At Aix-en-Provence (stage 15) Dutchman Wout Wagtmans took the jersey, but Walkowiak was still well placed.

wn.com/Roger_Walkowiak

Romain Maes
Romain Maes (18 August 1913 in Zerkegem– 22 February 1983 in Groot-Bijgaarden) was a Belgian cyclist who won the 1935 Tour de France after wearing the yellow jersey of leadership from beginning to end.
Maes was the 13th child in his family. He started racing when he was 17. He turned professional in 1933 and won the Omloop van het Westen (Tour of the West). The following year he started the Tour de France and twice finished stages in second place. He then crashed on the day from Digne to Nice and left the race in an ambulance.
His win in 1935 ended a six-year run by French riders. He was a hero in Belgium.
He won Paris–Roubaix in 1936 but wasn't given the victory. The judge said he had seen the Frenchman, Georges Speicher, win. In 1938 he was well on the way to winning Paris-Brussels, leading the race by 100m with only 500m to go. He rode into the velodrome on which the race finished, crossed the line and stopped. The chasers, who had remembered that there was a further lap to ride, swept by him. Maes realised his mistake too late and Marcel Kint won.

wn.com/Romain_Maes

Romāns Vainšteins
Romāns Vainšteins (born March 3, 1973, in Talsi) is a former professional road bicycle racer from Latvia. He won the road race at the 2000 world cycling championship in Plouay, France. He covered the 269 km in 6h 15m 28s, the best of 158 starters.
In 2001 he came in 3rd in the Paris–Roubaix race, behind the winner Servais Knaven.
1995
1996
1998 - Kross (Italy)
1999 - Vini Caldirola-Sidermec (Italy)

wn.com/Romāns_Vainšteins

Rudi Altig
Rudi Altig (born Mannheim, Baden, Germany, 18 March 1937) is a former professional track and road racing cyclist who won the 1962 Vuelta a España and the world championship in 1966. He is now a television commentator.
Rudi Altig was born in an area which had produced good track riders. He began racing in 1952, following his older brother, Willi. The brothers teamed for madisons and other two-man races, becoming the best in the country. The British promoter, Jim Wallace, booked Altig to ride with Hans Jaroszewicz at a meeting on Herne Hill velodrome in Good Friday in 1956. He said:
Altig became national sprint champion in 1957 and 1958. Then Karly Ziegler, a coach, took over his preparation when he joined the Endspurt Mannheim club and Altig became a pursuiter. He won the 1959 national pursuit championship and won the madison championship with his brother. Later that year he beat many of the world's best pursuiters to become world champion in Amsterdam.
Altig was allowed by the Union Cycliste Internationale to turn professional in 1960 within a year of his world championship. He rode his first professional six-day, in Denmark, that winter. Wallace said:

wn.com/Rudi_Altig

Rudy Dhaenens
Rudy Dhaenens (Deinze 10 April 1961 – Aalst 6 April 1998) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer who is most famous for winning the World Cycling Championships in 1990 as a member of the Belgian national team.
Dhaenens excelled several times in the Paris–Roubaix classic race; finishing second in 1986 and third the following year. Dhaenens won the 1990 World Championship Road Race, held in Utsunomiya, Japan, ahead of Dirk De Wolf of Belgium and Gianni Bugno of Italy. In 1992, Dhaenens was forced to stop his career because of heart problems. For a long time, he was in the service of the PDM cycling team, usually as tactical captain. Dhaenens was known for his calm, reserved attitude.
He died at the age of 36 because of a car accident in Aalst while driving to the finish of the Tour of Flanders bicycle race. In his honor, the Grand Prix Rudy Dhaenens is held each year in Nevele, Belgium.

wn.com/Rudy_Dhaenens

Samuel Sánchez
Samuel Sánchez González (born February 5, 1978 in Oviedo, Asturias) is a Spanish professional road bicycle racer. He was the gold medal winner in the 2008 Beijing Olympics Men's Road Race. In recent years Sánchez has proven himself in hilly classics and stage races as one of the most important riders in the peloton. He's also known as one of the best descenders in the peloton.
He started his professional career in 2000 at the Spanish team Euskaltel-Euskadi and still rides there today.
In 2003, Sánchez finished 6th in Liège–Bastogne–Liège and third overall in the Tour of the Basque Country. The following year, he came 4th in Liège–Bastogne–Liège, and came 15th overall in his first Vuelta a España. He recorded his first major victory in 2005 when he won the 13th stage in the Vuelta a España, finishing 11th in the general classification. After winner Roberto Heras was erased from the results for doping use, Sánchez shifted up to the 10th place.
In 2006 the Asturian added two stage wins in the Vuelta al País Vasco and a second place on the steep finishing climb of the Belgian spring classic La Flèche Wallonne. Sánchez won two stages in the Tour of the Basque Country. He finished 4th overall in Paris-Nice, winning the points jersey in the process. In the Vuelta a España he won the 13th stage (just like the year before) with a daring attack in a downhill section and finished 7th in the general classification. At the World Championships in the Austrian city of Salzburg Sánchez played a major part by creating the decisive break in the final kilometer for his leader Alejandro Valverde. Sánchez himself finished 4th behind Paolo Bettini, Erik Zabel and Valverde. One week later he won Züri-Metzgete, his first classic. With 12 km to go he attacked to solo into Zurich with half a minute to spare over Stuart O'Grady and Davide Rebellin. Two weeks later he finished second in the Giro di Lombardia, and secured his second place in the final UCI ProTour classification.

wn.com/Samuel_Sánchez

Stan Ockers
Constant ("Stan") Ockers (3 February 1920, Borgerhout – 1 October 1956, Antwerp) was a Belgian professional racing cyclist.
He was runner-up in the Tour de France in 1950 and 1952, and the best sprinter in that race in 1955 and 1956. In 1955 he won the Classic "Ardennes double" by winning La Flèche Wallonne and the Liège–Bastogne–Liège in the same year. At this time the races were run on successive days as "Le Weekend Ardennais". He also won the World Cycling Championship that year.
Stan Ockers died after crashing during a track race in Antwerp in 1956. A year later a monument was built in Les Forges, Sprimont, in the south of Belgium.

wn.com/Stan_Ockers

Stephen Roche
Stephen Roche (born 28 November 1959 in Dundrum, Dublin, Ireland) is a retired professional road racing cyclist. In a 13-year professional career, he peaked in 1987, becoming only the second cyclist to win the Triple Crown of victories in the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia stage races, plus the World road race championship. Roche's rise coincided with that of fellow Irishman Sean Kelly.
Although one of the finest cyclists of his generation and admired for his pedalling style, he struggled with knee injuries and never contended in the Grand Tours post-1987. He had 58 professional career wins.
On completion of his apprenticeship as a machinist in a Dublin dairy and following a successful amateur career in Ireland with the "Orwell Wheelers" club coached by Noel O'Neill of Dundrum (including a win in the Rás Tailteann in 1979), Roche joined the Athletic Club de Boulogne-Billancourt amateur team in Paris to prepare for the 1980 Olympic games in Moscow. Soon after his arrival Roche won the amateur Paris–Roubaix, escaping with Dirk Demol and sprinting to victory on the track at Roubaix. Roche was told by his directeur sportif that if he did not win he "would be sent home to Ireland that day".

wn.com/Stephen_Roche

Steve Cummings
Stephen Philip "Steve" Cummings (born 19 March 1981) is an English racing cyclist for UCI ProTour team BMC Racing Team.
Cummings won the team pursuit at the 2005 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles and at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. He also took bronze in the individual pursuit. At the 2004 Olympics in Athens Cummings and the Great Britain team achieved a time of 3–59.
In 1999, riding for Birkenhead North End CC as a junior, aged 17, Cummings won the Eddie Soens Memorial Road Race, a handicap race open to all categories. It remains the only time in 46 years that a junior has won. He went on to take the British National Road Race Championships that year.
In 2006 he rode for Landbouwkrediet-Colnago and came second in the Trofeo Laigueglia to Alessandro Ballan of Lampre-Fondital. In 2007 he switched to Discovery Channel before moving to Barloworld in 2008.
His first professional win was in 2008, stage 2 of the Giro della Provincia di Reggio Calabria.
Cummings joined new British-based Team Sky for the 2010 season.

wn.com/Steve_Cummings

Steve Morabito
Steve Morabito (born January 30, 1983 in Monthey) is a Swiss professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.

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Sylvère Maes
Sylvère Maes (born 27 August 1909 in Zevekote – died 5 December 1966 in Ostend) was a Belgian cyclist, who is most famous for winning the Tour de France in 1936 and 1939. In 1937, Maes left the 1937 Tour de France together with his Belgian team while he was leading the general classification, in response to actions from French spectators and decisions from the jury.
Born in 1909 as the youngest in a family of ten children, Maes rode his first cycling race in 1928, and immediately was one of the best young riders. At the end of the 1932 season, Maes became a professional cyclist, and in a short time managed to win two races for professionals. Maes was a cyclo-cross talent, which he showed by winning the 1933 Critérium International de Cyclo-cross, considered the unofficial cyclo-cross world championship. In 1933 Maes recorded his first major victory by winning Paris–Roubaix. In the rest of his career, he would focus on the Tour de France.
In 1934, Maes made his debute in the Tour de France as an individual, but had more success than the Belgians in the national team, and was the only Belgian to win a stage. In the general classification, he finished in eighth place.

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Taylor Phinney
Taylor Phinney (born June 27, 1990 in Boulder, Colorado) is a world champion American racing cyclist, specialising on the track in individual pursuit. He is the son of former professional racing cyclist Davis Phinney and former Olympic gold medal racing cyclist and speed skater Connie Carpenter-Phinney. Phinney rides professionally for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.
Phinney started bike racing at age 15 on Team Slipstream's Junior Team. In August 2007, he won the Junior World Championships for the time trial. Since then he has competed in Nationals, World Cups and World Championships for track cycling. Phinney finished seventh in the individual pursuit at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Later that year, at the US National Track Championships, he won gold medals in the elite 1 km time trial, individual pursuit and team pursuit races. On September 24, 2008, Lance Armstrong announced that Phinney had been named to the Under-23 team being organized by Armstrong.
On July 29, 2010, it was announced that Phinney and teammates Jesse Sergent and Clinton Avery would ride in the Tour of Denmark for Team RadioShack.

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Tejay van Garderen
Tejay van Garderen (born August 12, 1988 in Tacoma, Washington) is an American professional cyclist for BMC Racing Team. He lives in Lucca, Tuscany, during the season.
Tejay van Garderen was born in Tacoma, Washington, but spent most of his childhood up in Bozeman, Montana. He is of Dutch descent. He began riding at 10. By 14, he nearly beat two hours at the Mount Evans hillclimb, a 28-mile climb gaining nearly 7,000 feet. He won 10 junior national titles in road (road race, criterium and TT) and cyclo-cross. Two of his early teams were the Team Rio Grande Racing developmental squad (2004–2005; Fort Collins, CO) and Team 5280 Magazine developmental squad (2005–2006, now part of Garmin-Cervelo; Boulder, CO)
Van Garderen's first big senior race was at age 18 in the 2007 Amgen Tour of California as a part of the national team. He pulled out on stage 4. He rode in the U.S. and Europe in 2007 and came 20th in the Tour de l'Avenir
Van Garderen joined Rabobank Continental in 2008. He lived in the Netherlands and came second in the Flèche du Sud and Circuito Montañes. He won a stage of the Tour de l'Avenir and came 24th in the Under-23 world road championship in Varese, Italy

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Theo Middelkamp
Theofiel ("Theo") Middelkamp (Nieuw-Namen, 23 February 1914–Kieldrecht, 2 May 2005) was a Dutch cyclist. In 1947, Middelkamp became world champion. In 1936, he was the first Dutch cyclist ever to win a stage in the Tour de France.
Middelkamp was born as the second son in a family of nine children. At an early age, he wanted to be a footballer, but he soon realised that there was much more money to be earned in cycling, as football was not yet a professional sport in the Netherlands.
Middelkamp was the first Dutchman to win a stage in the Tour de France. When he came to the Tour, he had never even seen mountains, coming from the very flat parts of the Netherlands. However, in his first Tour, on July 14, 1936, he won the difficult mountain stage from Aix-les-Bains to Grenoble, which went over the Col du Galibier. That year, he finished 23rd overall. In 1937 he had to quit the Tour because of a fall, in which he broke a finger.
In 1938 he won the seventh stage (Bayonne-Pau). In that tour, he won 8,000 francs, much less than he could have earned in races in Flanders, and so he decided not to participate in any later Tours. As Middelkamp famously said, "I cannot live on fame and honour".

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Thor Hushovd
Thor Hushovd (born Grimstad, Aust-Agder, Norway, 18 January 1978) is a Norwegian professional road bicycle racer riding for BMC Racing Team. He is known for sprinting and time trialing and is the 2010 Norwegian and world road champion. He is the first Norwegian to lead the Tour de France, and first Scandinavian to win the road race in cycling world road championship. He is also the Scandinavian with the most stage wins in Grand Tours.
Hushovd won the under-23 time trial world championship and the under-23 versions of Paris–Roubaix and Paris–Tours before turning professional in 1998. He was Norwegian time trial champion in 2004 and 2005 and road race champion in 2004 and 2010. In 2006, he won seven UCI ProTour races and two stages of the Tour de France. He won the prologue in Strasbourg and led after the first day despite a cut arm. He continued with stitches and regained the yellow jersey after stage 2 with a third place. He won the last stage, beating Robbie McEwen in a sprint. In the 2006 Vuelta a España he won stage 6, wore the golden jersey for three stages and won the points classification

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Tim Roe
Timothy Roe (born 28 October 1989) is a professional Australian road cyclist, currently riding for BMC Racing Team.

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Tom Boonen
Tom Boonen pronounced [Boʊnən] (born 15 October 1980 in Mol) is a Belgian professional road bicycle racer who won the 2005 World Road Race Championship. He is a member of the Omega Pharma-Quick Step team, and is considered a single-day road race specialist with a strong finishing sprint. His personality and looks, combined with his successes, also turned him into Belgium's main male sports idol of the mid-2000s, but he incurred censure after testing positive twice for the use of cocaine.
At the start of 2002 Boonen rode for the US Postal team, finishing third in Paris–Roubaix after an early breakaway. Fellow Belgian rider Johan Museeuw had escaped off the front of the race to a solo victory, and team captain George Hincapie crashed in a slippery section of the course leaving Boonen to ride for himself. Boonen's performance in the race compelled Museeuw – his childhood hero – to publicly declare Boonen his natural successor.
However, Boonen was not completely happy at US Postal, claiming he did not get enough chances to ride for himself. Towards the end of the year he announced he would leave the team, despite being under contract, and joined Quick Step-Davitamon at the start of 2003. The 2003 season, however, did not go well for Boonen, who saw lacklustre performance due to fatigue and a knee injury. In this season Museeuw was the undisputed team leader for the spring classics campaign.

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Tom Simpson
Tom Simpson (30 November 1937–13 July 1967) was the most successful English road racing cyclist of the post-war years. Simpson was Britain's first men's road race World Champion (a feat matched only by Mark Cavendish in 2011), and won three monument classics, Paris-Nice and two Vuelta a España stages. He infamously died of exhaustion on the slopes of Mont Ventoux during the 13th stage of the Tour de France in 1967. The post mortem found that he had taken amphetamine and alcohol, a diuretic combination which proved fatal when combined with the heat, the hard climb of the Ventoux and a stomach complaint.
Simpson was the youngest of the six children of coalmine worker Tom Simpson senior and his wife Alice, née Cheetham, and was born in Haswell, County Durham. Tom senior worked at nearby South Hetton Colliery, while Alice ran Haswell Workingmen's Club. After World War II, the Simpson family moved to Harworth in north Nottinghamshire, another mining village, where Simpson grew up and acquired his interest in cycling. He attended the village school and later Worksop Technical College and in 1954 was an apprentice draughtsman at an engineering company in Retford.

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Tony Rominger
Tony Rominger (born 27 March 1961 in Vejle, Denmark) is a Swiss former professional road racing cyclist who won the Vuelta a España in 1992, 1993 and 1994 and the Giro d'Italia in 1995.
He began cycling late, allegedly spurred by competition with his brother. Rominger's strengths were time-trialling, climbing and recuperation.
He was a challenger to Miguel Indurain in the Tour de France, placing second in 1993 and winning the polka dot jersey. His three wins in the Vuelta is a record. In 2005 Roberto Heras broke that record but two months later tested positive for the blood-boosting drug EPO and was disqualified.
In 1994 Rominger broke the world hour record twice in a few days. He used Bordeaux velodrome to ride 53.832 km and then 55.291 km, although a track novice.
He retired in 1997 after breaking his collarbone at that year's Tour de France.
WD = Withdrew

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Urs Freuler
Urs Freuler (born 6 November 1958 in Bilten, Canton of Glarus) is a Swiss cyclist, who raced professionally between 1980 and 1997, during which he won 71 victories. He was named Swiss Sports Personality of the Year in 1982 and 1983.
He was born in Bilten. As an amateur, he was the champion of his country in several categories and also achieved fame in international competitions.
He was a racer of great speed, who participated both in road races as well as track cycling. In the latter, he was the world champion on numerous occasions.
On the road, he achieved fifteen stage victories on the Giro d'Italia, as well as numerous victories in six-day races, criteriums, or classics.
In 1981, Freuler was riding for a personal sponsor, when the TI-Raleigh cycling team had problems to form a team for the 1981 Tour de France. The rules allowed for the Raleigh team to hire cyclists who were not riding for a cycling team, and Freuler was added to the Tour squad. Because Freuler, as a track cyclist, was not used the mountains, his team leader Peter Post decided that Freuler had to leave the race before the Alps would be visited. Freuler, who acted as a replacement for sprinter Jan Raas, was able to win stage 7, and left the race in stage 15, and after that he never started in the Tour again.

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Vittorio Adorni
Vittorio Adorni (born San Lazzaro di Parma, Italy, 14 November 1937) is an Italian former professional road racing cyclist .
Vittorio Adorni was a talented amateur and showed early talent at riding alone. He began racing in 1955 and won the national amateur pursuit championship in 1959 Skill at riding fast alone won him the world professional road championship nine years later.
Adorni won the Trofeo de Gasperiin 1960 and turned professional during 1961 after winning the Coppa San Geo.
Adorni won two races in his first full year as a professional in 1961, riding for Philco and winning stages of the Giro d'Italia and the Tour of Sardinia. Adorni was more a domestique than a leader but he nevertheless won the 1965 Giro and the 1968 world road race championship. The championship was on the car race circuit at Imola, Italy. He broke clear with 93 km still to ride. He finished 10 minutes ahead of the field, helped in the peloton by his Italian team-mates and also by Merckx, his normal team-mate, who did not take up the chase.

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Wikipedia Persondata
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Yannick Eijssen
Yannick Eijssen (26 June 1989) is a Belgian cyclist.He was born in Leuven, Belgium.He is currently riding for UCI ProTeam BMC Racing Team.

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Éloi Meulenberg
Eloi Meulenberg (22 September 1912 - 26 February 1989) was a Belgian professional road bicycle racer. He is most known for his gold medal in the Elite race of the 1937 Road World Championships and his 9 stage wins in the Tour de France.

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Óscar Freire
Óscar Freire Gómez (born February 15, 1976 in Torrelavega, Cantabria) is a Spanish professional road bicycle racer, riding for UCI ProTeam Team Katusha. He is one of the top sprinters in road bicycle racing, having won the world championship three times, equalling Alfredo Binda, Rik Van Steenbergen and Eddy Merckx. He has also won Milan – San Remo three times.
Despite diminutive stature, Freire is a feared sprinter. He is sometimes criticized for his training, since he rides only half the distance of other cyclists.^{[citation needed]}
Freire became professional in 1998 with Vitalicio Seguros. He won one race that year, a stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León. He came 11th in Paris–Tours. In 1999, Freire won little until the world championship in October. He went to Verona to make up numbers in the Spanish team. He spent his prize on an elevator for his grandmother's apartment.
Freire joined Mapei in 2000. It had been ranked best team since 1994. That year he won 11 races including two stages in the Vuelta a España. He also came third place in the world championship. In 2001 he won two races and took the points competition in the Vuelta a Burgos, before becoming world champion for the second time. In 2002 he won a stage in the Tour de France.

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Óscar Pereiro
Óscar Pereiro Sío (born August 3, 1977) is a former Spanish professional road bicycle racer best known for winning the 2006 Tour de France after the original winner, Floyd Landis, was disqualified for failing a series of doping tests. Pereiro is a former member of Porta da Ravessa (2000 to 2001), Phonak Hearing Systems (2002 to 2005), Caisse d'Epargne (2006 to 2009), and the Astana cycling team (2010). After retiring from cycling in 2010, Pereiro joined his local part-time football club Coruxo FC of the Segunda División B.
Pereiro placed tenth in the 2004 Tour de France, 22 minutes 54 seconds behind Tour winner Lance Armstrong. He was awarded the Most Aggressive Rider Award in the 2005 Tour de France after powering the winning breakaways in Stages 15, 16 and 18. He was the Stage 16 winner - just edging out Spain's Xabier Zandio, Italy's Eddy Mazzoleni and Australia's Cadel Evans. His efforts on Stage 15, the toughest stage of the Tour, were highly admired by the peloton. He finished second that day to Discovery Channel's George Hincapie after "pulling" for most of the final climb up the Pla D'Adet.

wn.com/Óscar_Pereiro

Persondata
Name	Evans, Cadel
Alternative names
Short description	Road bicycle racer
Date of birth	14 February 1977
Place of birth	Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia
Date of death
Place of death

Dave Hughes

Born	(1970-11-26) 26 November 1970 (age 41) Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
Show	Hughesy & Kate
Station(s)	Nova 100
Time slot	6:00 - 9:00 a.m. weekdays
Style	Breakfast Show Host
Country	Australia
Website	www.nova100.com.au

Persondata
Name	Hughes, Dave
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	26 November 1970
Place of birth	Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia
Date of death
Place of death

Persondata
Name	Schleck, Andy
Alternative names
Short description	Road bicycle racer
Date of birth	1985-06-10
Place of birth	Luxembourg (city), Luxembourg
Date of death
Place of death

Grand Tour	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Giro	14	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	5	-
Tour	-	-	-	8	4	2	2	30	26	1
Vuelta	-	-	60	-	-	4	-	3	-	-

Evans, Cadel Filmography

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