Alberto Contador

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Alberto Contador Road cycling
Alberto Contador at the Tour de France 2017
Alberto Contador at the Tour de France 2017
To person
Nickname El Pistolero
Date of birth December 6, 1982
nation SpainSpain Spain
discipline Street
Driver type Tour driver
height 1.76 m
Racing weight 62 kg
End of career 2017
doping
2010–2012 Clenbuterol
Team (s)
2003
2004–2006
2007
2008–2010
2011–2016
2017 		ONCE
Liberty Seguros
Discovery Channel
Astana
Tinkoff
Trek-Segafredo
Most important successes

Yellow jersey Tour de France 2007 , 2009 Giro d'Italia 2008 , 2015 Vuelta a España 2008 , 2012 , 2014 Spanish Champion - Time Trial 2009 UCI World Calendar 2009
Pink jersey
Golden jersey
Spanish master
UCI World Ranking leader jersey

Last updated: September 11, 2017

Alberto Contador Velasco (born December 6, 1982 in Madrid ) is a former Spanish cyclist .

Contador is the fifth driver to win all three “Grand Tours” ( Tour de France , Vuelta a España and Giro d'Italia ) and, since 2015, the second after Bernard Hinault to have won each of them more than once. In addition to these tours, he also won other important competitions such as Paris-Nice and the Tour of the Basque Country .

In 2010 he was banned for doping , the ban was then lifted and in February 2012 retrospectively for two years, from August 2010 to August 2012, the International Court of Justice (CAS) pronounced it again. At the same time, Contador was officially denied all successes since the positive doping report, including the overall victories of the Tour de France 2010 and the Giro d'Italia 2011 .

Career

Contador in 2005

Contador celebrated his first major victory in 2002 when he won the Spanish U-23 time trial championship at the age of 19.

In the following season, Contador became a professional with the ONCE cycling team . In his first year at ONCE, he won a time trial at the Tour of Poland . From 2004 to 2006 he drove for Liberty Seguros , the new team around Manolo Saiz .

During a stage of the Tour of Asturias in May 2004, Contador suffered an epileptic fit and fell. The doctors then diagnosed him with a cavernoma in his brain , which was surgically removed a little later. Contador was out for the rest of the season.

In 2005 Contador had his breakthrough: He won a stage in the Tour Down Under and a stage and the overall classification at the Catalan Week . In the ProTour races Basque Country Tour and Tour de Romandie , he won a stage each and was third and fourth in the final rankings. In 2006 he won another stage of the Tour de Romandie and this time came second in the overall classification. In the run-up to the Tour de France 2006 , Contador was excluded from the tour together with 50 other drivers, including four teammates, due to alleged involvement in the Fuentes doping scandal . An abbreviation of his name on a seized Fuentes list had been assigned to him. In later lists, however, the name Contador no longer appeared.

In 2007 Contador drove for the American Discovery Channel team . On March 18, 2007, he won the final stage and the overall ranking of the Paris – Nice long-distance journey . On July 22, 2007, he won the 14th stage of the Tour de France . After overall leader Michael Rasmussen was suspended from his team on July 25, 2007 , Contador won the overall ranking of the tour.

Contador in the mountain time trial of the Vuelta a España 2008
Alberto Contador in yellow on the Champs-Elysées on the 2009 Tour

After the Discovery Channel team dissolved at the end of 2007, Contador and many of his teammates moved to the Kazakh team Astana , with whom he won the Giro d'Italia on June 1, 2008 . Because the Astana team was not allowed to take part in the Tour de France , he was unable to defend his 2007 victory.

In September 2008 he won the Vuelta a España ahead of his teammate Levi Leipheimer , making Contador one of the few drivers who could win all three major national tours. Only Jacques Anquetil , Bernard Hinault , Felice Gimondi and Eddy Merckx had succeeded before him , and Vincenzo Nibali and Chris Froome after him .

In July 2009 he won the 15th stage of the Tour de France 2009 and thus took the lead in the overall standings. After he was able to extend his lead on the other stages (including a second place in the 17th stage and a victory in the following time trial ahead of Fabian Cancellara ), he secured his second overall victory in the Tour de France.

After winning the Giro 2011

Since the outgoing Lance Armstrong had taken the entire squad of the Astana team with him to the newly founded Team RadioShack, except for Contador , Contador went into the 2010 Tour with a completely new team . His most important helper was the Kazakh Alexander Vinokurov , who returned after a doping ban . Contador had a neck and neck race with last year's runner-up Andy Schleck . The course of the 15th stage , which ended in Luchon, caused a lot of discussion . When Schleck attacked, the chain jumped off the bike. Contador as well as Denis Menschow and Samuel Sánchez , who were in the immediate pursuit of the Luxemburgish man at the time, did not wait and gained a lead of 39 seconds. Some experts rated the behavior as unsportsmanlike, while others saw it as a normal racing incident. Similar discussions had already taken place after the 3rd stage after Andy Schleck had benefited from a fall on a cobblestone section and a broken wheel spoke of Contador to make up a minute and 13 seconds on the Spaniard. In the end, Contador won the Tour for the third time with 39 seconds ahead of Schleck, exactly the same time he had gained over his rival on the 15th stage. This victory was later revoked due to a positive doping result (→ doping ).

Despite the ongoing doping investigation against Contador, he was allowed to take part in the Giro d'Italia 2011 and won the overall ranking by a large margin as the top favorite. Contador already demonstrated his strength on the 9th stage when he took a step on Mount Etna that none of the fellow favorites could follow, so that he also took the overall lead for his stage success. He was also the first to finish the mountain time trial of the 16th stage. At the finish in Milan, Contador celebrated his second success in the Tour of Italy with 6:10 minutes ahead of the Italian Michele Scarponi and 6:56 minutes over his compatriot Vincenzo Nibali. This victory was subsequently withdrawn due to the positive doping result at the Tour de France 2010, as the two-year ban came into effect retrospectively on January 25, 2011 (→ doping ).

On February 5, 2012, Contador competed at the Trofeo Palma on the occasion of the Mallorca Challenge for the Saxo Bank team, his last race before his doping ban until August 2012. After the doping ban he contested the Eneco Tour , which he finished in fourth place. Subsequently, he contested the Vuelta a España , in which he took the stage victory and the lead in the overall standings with a surprise attack on the 17th stage and thus won the tour.

In the 2013 season, Contador achieved his only victory in a stage of the Tour de San Luis . After he had only achieved fourth place in the Tour de France , Oleg Tinkow accused him of a lack of professionalism.

After a successful spring with victories at Tirreno-Adriatico 2014 and the Tour of the Basque Country , as well as second places in the Tour of Catalonia and the Critérium du Dauphiné , Contador was one of the top favorites of the Tour de France . However, the Spaniard had a hard crash during the 10th stage , but he took up the race again after a treatment break of several minutes. After 15 kilometers he gave up and was later diagnosed with a broken tibia. Just six weeks later, Contador started at the Vuelta . He won the race confidently for the third time in his career and is now one of the record winners of the Tour of Spain with three victories alongside Tony Rominger and Roberto Heras .

In 2015 Contador competed with the aim of winning the Double Giro d'Italia - Tour de France. After winning the 2015 Giro d'Italia against Fabio Aru , he finished fifth in the subsequent Tour de France 2015 and first announced after the tour that this year's Clásica San Sebastián in August would be his last race of the season will. He wants to concentrate fully on the preparations for the Tour de France 2016 and the 2016 Olympic Games . A few days later it was announced that he would no longer drive the Clásica because of an illness .

Initially, Contador announced that he would end his cycling career at the end of the 2016 season. After winning the Tour of the Basque Country, which is part of the WorldTour, at the beginning of 2016 , he reversed this decision. After falling on the first stages and a fever before the start of the ninth stage of the 2016 Tour de France , Contador gave up during the course of the stage. Before that, he had tried in vain to join a breakaway group. Then he was successful in the Burgos Tour , the dress rehearsal for the Vuelta . During the tour of Spain, however, he lost time early on to the eventual winner Nairo Quintana . In the second half of the tour he managed to make up positions and finish fourth overall.

In July 2016 it was announced that Contador had signed a one-year contract with the Trek-Segafredo racing team for the 2017 season with the option of a one-year extension .

In August 2017, Alberto Contador announced that he would end his cycling career after the upcoming Vuelta . At his last start on this tour, which he won three times, he wore starting number one. He finished fifth in the overall standings and “stole” the overall winner Chris Froome “the show”, especially through his victory on the 20th stage, a difficult mountain stage to the Alto de Angliru . In addition, he won the rating as “Most Combative Driver”. The Rheinische Post summed up his career: “For the Pistolero it was the perfect end to an impressive career that brought great successes, but also deep breaks. Contador's legacy, which in his old days also turned into a public favorite outside of Spain, is unquestionably an ambivalent one. His name belongs to the dark past of cycling, but it also stands for such memorable racing moments as on Saturday on the brutal ramp in Asturias. ”Two days after the end of the Vuelta, Contador was welcomed by 5000 people in his home town of Pinto , who chanted“ Un año más ”(“ one more year ”).

doping

Contador was said to have been in contact with Eufemiano Fuentes and thus involved in the Fuentes doping scandal . He was suspected of having been registered under the abbreviation "AC" in the doctor's customer file. In a revised version of the Fuentes list, which was published a short time later, it then no longer appeared. Contador himself has always denied all doping allegations.

In a doping sample taken during the Tour de France on July 21, 2010, a positive result of a small amount of clenbuterol in the A and B sample was found. According to the UCI regulations , Contador, who had already completed his season at the time of reporting at the end of September 2010, was temporarily suspended. Contador himself referred to the small amount of the substance found and suspected food contamination as the cause of the positive finding, and later specified that a piece of meat bought from a helper in Spain had been contaminated. Contador was banned on September 30, 2010. In addition, traces of plasticizers, which are often found after blood transfusions, were discovered in the samples. On February 15, 2011, the Spanish cycling federation RFEC acquitted him of the allegation of doping on the grounds that the rider had been able to prove that he had consumed the prohibited substance through no fault of his own and lifted his one-year ban. At the end of March 2011, the UCI appealed to the CAS International Court of Justice on the grounds that, after an "intensive examination" of the documents submitted by the Spanish association, they were not convinced that the driver had provided evidence that he had consumed the Clenbuterol through no fault of his own . The world anti-doping agency WADA joined the UCI's appeal a few days later.

In February 2012, the International Court of Justice for Sports gave Contador a two-year doping ban on the basis of the two objections. The thesis of a prohibited blood transfusion, as represented by WADA, is possible in principle, as is the thesis of the contadors of a contaminated piece of meat, but the more likely cause is a contaminated food supplement . However, Contador had not provided the evidence required by the WADA code that he was not responsible for the finding and should therefore be blocked. The ban came into effect retrospectively on January 25, 2011. The time that Contador was already blocked in 2010 and 2011 was counted towards the period of blocking: five months and 19 days. The doping ban ended on August 5, 2012. In addition to the 2010 Tour de France title, all of Contador's results after January 25, 2011 were deleted from the results lists, including the 2011 Giro d'Italia victory.

According to a report published in March 2015 by the Cycling Independent Reform Commission set up by the UCI , Alberto Contador was given preferential treatment after his positive doping test by the UCI, in which he personally informed three UCI officials in Spain about the possibility of a positive test through contaminated meat - his later defense strategy - had been pointed out.

After his resignation in 2017, Albert Contador described this suspension for doping as one of the “greatest injustices in sport”.

Former professional cyclist Floyd Landis said in an interview with Graham Bensinger in 2011 about Alberto Contador Velasco: "His coach (from Alberto Contador) was my drug courier (from Floyd Landis)" and "His coach was my drug dealer".

engagement

On January 3, 2014, Contador announced the establishment of a bicycle school in his hometown of Pinto. Here he would like to take care of the promotion of young talent together with his foundation.

successes

Chris Froome (r.) And Contador on the 2013 tour

2002

  • Spanish master Spanish Champion - Individual Time Trial (U23)

2003

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Grand Tour placements

Grand Tour 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Maglia Rosa Giro d'Italia - - - 1 - - DSQ - - - 1 - -
Yellow jersey Tour de France 31 - 1 - 1 DSQ DSQ - 4th DNF 5 DNF 9
Red jersey Vuelta a España - - - 1 - - - 1 - 1 - 4th 5
Legend: DNF: did not finish , abandoned or withdrawn from the race due to timeout. DSQ: disqualification.

Awards

Web links

Commons : Alberto Contador  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ↑ Alberto Contador Biography ( Memento from May 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ↑ Chain of stumbling blocks ( memento of August 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) on www.sportschau.de, accessed on August 9, 2012
  3. ↑ radsport-news.com from August 12, 2012: Boom wins the 8th Eneco Tour
  4. ↑ radsport-news.com from September 5, 2012: http://www.radsport-news.com/sport/sportnews_77561.htm
  5. ↑ radsport-news.com of September 9, 2012: Contador: "As emotional as a comeback after brain surgery"
  6. ^ Veit Hammer: Is Alberto Contador following Fernando Alonso's call? velomotion.de, September 3, 2014, accessed October 1, 2014 .
  7. ↑ 101st Tour de France - Nibali on the way to the summit, Contador on the ground. radsport-news.com, July 14, 2014, accessed October 1, 2014 .
  8. ↑ Spaniard celebrates third Vuelta victory Contador succeeds in sporting rebirth. radsport-news.com, September 14, 2014, accessed October 1, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Contador ends his season after Clásica San Sebastián. In: radsport-news.com. April 23, 2015, accessed July 29, 2015 .
  10. ↑ Degenkolb wins in Wels, sick Contador ends the season. In: radsport-news.com. April 23, 2015, accessed July 30, 2015 .
  11. ↑ Contador: It's not over at the end of the season. In: radsport-news.com. April 10, 2016, accessed February 4, 2017 .
  12. ^ Contador abandons the Tour de France. cyclingnews.com, July 10, 2016, accessed July 10, 2016 .
  13. ^ Daniel Brickwedde: Contador: "I am in a difficult situation". In: radsport-news.com. August 30, 2016. Retrieved February 4, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Cort Nielsen wins final stage, Quintana tour winner. In: radsport-news.com. September 11, 2016, accessed February 4, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Contador signs with Trek-Segafredo. In: radsport-news.com. July 12, 2016. Retrieved February 4, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Cycling: Contador honored with number one jersey at Vuelta. In: reuters.com. August 8, 2017, accessed August 8, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Cycling: Contador steals the show from Vuelta winner Froome. In: rp-online.de. September 10, 2017. Retrieved September 11, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Alberto Contador feted in hometown of Pinto. In: Cycling News. September 13, 2017, accessed on September 13, 2017 .
  19. ^ Andreas Burkert: AC like Alberto Contador. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. July 24, 2007.
  20. ↑ Tour winner Contador tested positive In: Spiegel online on September 30, 2010.
  21. ↑ radsport-news.com of September 30, 2010: Contaminated beef from Spain?
  22. ↑ radsport-news.com from September 30, 2010: "Contador blocked after positive test"
  23. ^ Contador case: soft blood . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 1, 2010. ISSN  0174-4909 . Retrieved April 7, 2012. 
  24. ↑ Confirmed: Alberto Contador cleared of Clenbuterol charges on cyclingnews.com, accessed on March 30, 2011
  25. ^ Spiegel Online: Spanish Association speaks Contador freely from February 15, 2011, read on February 17, 2011
  26. ↑ UCI appeals Contador decision to Court of Arbitration for Sport on cyclingnews.com, accessed on: March 30, 2011
  27. ↑ UCI appeals against Contador acquittal In: Spiegel online on March 24, 2011, accessed on March 30, 2011
  28. ↑ Wada appeals against Contador's acquittal In: Spiegel online on March 30, 2011, accessed on March 30, 2011
  29. ↑ CAS-Arbitral Award in matters 2011 / A / 2384 and 2386 UCI or WADA v. Alberto Contador Velasco & RFEC ( Memento from February 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (pdf, 622 kB)
  30. ↑ radsport-news.com of February 7, 2012: CAS rejects meat and blood doping theory
  31. ↑ Press release International Sports Court : Alberto Contador found guilty of an anti-doping rule violation by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS): Suspension of two years ( Memento of November 2, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (English, PDF)
  32. ↑ CIRC: "The fight against doping is far from over". Radsport-News.com, March 9, 2015, accessed March 10, 2015 .
  33. ^ CIRC finds no proof of UCI corruption but questions linger over governance. Cycling-News.com, March 10, 2015, accessed March 10, 2015 .
  34. ↑ Contador sees earlier doping bans as unjust. In: rad-net.de. September 26, 2017. Retrieved September 27, 2017 .
  35. ↑ http://grahambensinger.com/index.php/episode-guide/episode-archive/landis-hamilton/
  36. ↑ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MjDRbf7MG5M
  37. ↑ Velomotion.de of January 3, 2014: "Alberto Contador opens bicycle school"
  38. ↑ a b c d e f Contador was disqualified for doping at the 2011 Tour de France. The results of the other mentioned races were canceled by the UCI, as they fell in the period of the retroactive doping ban on January 25, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Contador, Alberto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Contador Velasco, Alberto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish cyclist
DATE OF BIRTH December 6, 1982
PLACE OF BIRTH Madrid