Gorazd Štangelj

Gorazd Štangelj
	Gorazd Štangelj at the prologue of the Tour de Romandie 2011
To person
Date of birth	January 27, 1973
nation	Slovenia
discipline	Street
To the team
Current team	Astana
function	Sports director
doping
2000	Slovenian Championships positive test
Societies)
1993-1995 ; 1996	KRKA-Telekom Slovenije ; Fior-Euromobil
Team (s)
1997–1998 ; 1999 ; 2000–2001 ; 2002–2003 ; 2004 ; 2005–2007 ; 2008–2009 ; 2010–2011	KRKA-Telekom Slovenije ; Mobilvetta Design-Northwave ; Liquigas-Pata ; Fassa Bortolo ; Saeco ; Lampre-Fondital ; Liquigas ; Pro Team Astana
Most important successes
	Slovenian champion - road race 2010
Team (s) as sporting director
2012-	Astana Pro Team
	Last updated: March 11, 2012

Gorazd Štangelj in the Slovenian jersey at the UCI Road World Championships 2009 in Mendrisio

Gorazd Štangelj (born January 27, 1973 in Novo mesto ) is a former Slovenian cyclist and later sports director .

Career

In 1990, Štangelj took part for the first time in a Junior World Championship, which took place in England that year and where his Slovenian teammate Bogdan Fink won the bronze medal. A year later, Štangelj was again at the World Championships - this time in Colorado Springs - and won the Tour de l'Abitibi in Canada a few days after the World Championships .

Gorazd Štangelj achieved his victories mainly in the first half of his career, where he was able to drive out leading positions in various races. He was able to celebrate some successes for the cycling team KRKA-Telekom in the 1998 season. At the GP Kranj he won the second stage and also took the overall victory. In addition, he won the Super-Prestige Gars and also crossed the finish line in stages of the Lower Saxony Tour , where he separated the field by nine seconds as a soloist on the fifth section of the day, and of the Course de la Solidarité Olympique in Poland as first crossed the finish line, where he took third place in the overall ranking. There was a silver medal at the Slovenian road racing championships, and at the Tour of Slovenia Štangelj only had to admit defeat to one competitor. Another podium place jumped out at the Grand Prix Midtbank in Denmark , where the Slovenian came third behind solo winner Bjarne Riis out of a group of pursuers. For the first time in 1999, Štangelj appeared in one of the biggest races in cycling, the Tour de Romandie , and finished in a remarkable eleventh place overall.

After a successful year in 1998, Štangelj switched to the Italian team Mobilvetta Design-Northwave . For this formation, the Slovene was victorious in the Commonwealth Bank Classic stage race in Australia , where he was once stage runner-up and on the penultimate day in the individual time trial only had to admit defeat to the Lithuanian Raimondas Rumšas , thus securing the overall victory. At the Grand Prix Kanton Aargau he was represented in the top group of three, but only finished third.

The 1.82-meter-tall driver stayed at Mobilvetta for only one year and went to Liquigas-Pata in 2000 . Here he again celebrated numerous successes and probably the most successful season of his career, for example he won the Italian one-day race Trofeo Melinda as a soloist and in the same way won a stage of the GP Midi Libre in France , where he finished fifth in the overall standings. He showed his qualities as a time trialist at the Tour of Austria , where he won the individual time trial of the second stage and after a day in the yellow jersey reached fourth place in the overall standings. He achieved another podium place in the Trofeo dello Scalatore hill climb in third place. In four other one-day races, including the Giro del Lazio , he finished in the top ten. At the Cycling World Cup , the Slovenian drew attention to himself with fifth place in Paris-Tours and ninth place in the Tour of Lombardy . He was also ahead in the road race of the Slovenian championships, but this title was revoked because of a positive doping test. With the Slovenian national team he also took part in the world championships at the end of the year and was 13th in the road race. This season, Štangelj achieved his best position in the UCI world rankings as 13th.

In his second year at Liquigas-Pata, he won the Giro di Toscana , where he defeated Pascal Hervé in a sprint before signing a contract with the top team Fassa Bortolo in September .

After this change, Štangelj appeared in the following years of his career mainly as a helper for his respective team captains and denied a total of twelve Grand Tours . In his two years at Fassa Bortolo, his best result was only fifth at the Coppa Sabatini in September 2003.

In 2004 he went to Saeco for a year . His best result there was 13th place in the Vuelta a Aragón in April. With the helper Štangelj at his side, Saeco driver Damiano Cunego won the Giro d'Italia this season as the youngest driver to date . At Saeco, the Slovenian also met team boss Giuseppe Martinelli , who a few years later would sign him for the Astana team.

From 2005, Štangelj drove for the Italian ProTeam Lampre , which had emerged from Saeco. He took part in the Tour de France for the first and only time in 2005 and finished it in 87th place overall. He finished 13th at the Tour de Pologne , and in October he finished seventh on the Tour of Lombardy . In the following season he narrowly missed his first win in five years when he was only defeated by Borut Božič in a mass sprint in his home country of the Tour of Slovenia on the first stage . In the overall standings, he finally came in tenth. In 2007, Štangelj won the Critérium International mountain classification and a month later he finished fourth in the Tour de Romandie mountain classification . At the Tour de Pologne he was 16th that year. At the end of 2007, he turned down a low-end offer to extend his contract with Lampre.

In May 2008 he received a new contract with Liquigas , whose team boss Roberto Amadio he already knew from his time at Liquigas-Pata 2000 to 2001.

In 2010, despite an option to extend his contract with Liquigas, he moved to the Pro Team Astana now led by Giuseppe Martinelli . In 2011 he competed in the one-day classic Paris – Roubaix for the first and only time in his career, finishing in 44th place.

At the end of the 2011 season, the now 38-year-old Gorazd Štangelj ended his career as an active professional cyclist after 15 years and became the sporting director of his last team.