Alberto Contador to become a legend of cycling, the most memorable moments of his career
PROFESSIONAL DEBUT IN 2002
Contador cycling carrer started late, aged 12, but he began to reap results soon in the lower categories until he made the leap to professionalism in September 2002. It was in the Mountain Circuit, where he was second behind Oscar Serrano. In the first full season in 2003 he triumph in the time trial of the Tour of Poland when he was still 20 years old.
THE CAVERNOMA CEREBRAL DE 2004
In this year something has happend that marked him for life, in the first stage of Liberty Seguros he began to get dizzy and then the convulsions made him fall. Later it was learned that everything was due to a congenital cerebral cavernoma that was operated in Madrid and left a scar from side to side of the head. The rehabilitation was hard but managed to return in 2005 in the Australian Tour Down Under, where he achieved a stage win that he has always considered as the most special of his entire career since it was his reappearance after his life had been in danger.
TRIUMPHAL DEBUT IN THE TOUR OF FRANCE OF 2007
He won the Plateau de Beille along the Best Young classification and the general final classification after Michael Rasmussen was sent off for three days an to an end of the race. Contador held the advantage well on the penultimate day and had a walk of honor in the Champs Elysees for the first time in his life when he was barely 24 years old.
VETADO IN THE TOUR AND DOUBETE TURN-TURN
In 2008 he debuted in the ranks of the Kazakh Astana, he managed to make a sensational doublet winning the his first Giro d’Italia and his first Vuelta a España in the same season. He was the second Spanish cyclist to win the Italian round after Miguel Indurain, in addition to winning two stages in the Spanish round.
SECOND TOUR AND THE ARMSTRONG CONTROVERSY
In his second year at Astana, in 2009 , he joined Lance Armstrong , who returned to cycling after his first retirement in 2005. The American never took well that the pinto was leader of the team in the Tour pushing him ahead to the finish and winning his second Tour de France.
THE PENALTY LEFT HIM OUT OF A GIRO AND A TOUR
In February 2012 the TAS ( Court of Arbitration for Sport ) finally confirmed it’s a two-year sanction for the positive clenbuterol. The UCI dispossessed him of the Giro of 2011 and the Tour de France of 2010, the races where he rode testing possitive. The penalty would start in August 2010 and end in August 2012.
TRIUMPHAL RETURN IN 2012
The Madrid rider returned to compete in the Eneco Tour in preparation for the only great that could return that year, the Vuelta a Espana. In that edition he achieved one of his most memorable and remembered stages. It was the famous day of Fuente De, when attacked 50 kilometers of goal to unseat Purito Rodriguez of the leadership of the general and seal his second victory in the general of the Spanish round.
THE FALLS AND THE FINAL RECALL
In 2016 he assured that it would be his last season and he arrived very motivated to the Tour de France, but in the first and the second stage he fell to the ground and the wounds forced him to leave. His bad relationship with his boss Oleg Tinkov along with his role in the Vuelta, where he staged one of the best stages in Formigal with Nairo Quintana, made him rethink what he said at the beginning of the year and decided to continue two more years in the rows of the Trek. In 2017 did not achieve any triumph in spite of being on the podium on countless ocassions in races like Vuelta a Andalucía, Paris-Nice, Volta a Catalunya and País Vasco. In the Tour he also suffered from falls and finished in ninth position. Later he would confirm that the Vuelta a España would be his last career as a professional cyclist. After trying to say goodbye with a stage victory on countless occasions, finally, on the penultimate day and in the hardest stage the L’Angliru Contador gave a recital attacking from the base of the colossal Asturian port to impose itself on the top and say goodbye from the top.
