Alberto Contador

About Alberto

He is aSpanish professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam Saxo Bank-SunGard. 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, the2008 Vuelta a España, the 2009 Tour de France,the 2010 Tour de France and won 2011 Giro d’Italia with team Saxo Bank-SunGard. He is the fifth racer in history, and the first Spaniard, to win all three Grand Tours of road cycling.
Contador has been referred to as the best climbing specialist and stage racer in the world. Notable summit stage finishes on which he has victories include the Alto de El Angliru in the Vuelta and the Plateau de Beille in the Tour. After being widely expected to lose his tenuous lead in the 2007 Tour de France in that race’s final individual time trial, Contador has become a more accomplished time trialist, with several victories in the discipline. He has earned a reputation as an all-rounder, a cyclist who excels in all aspects of stage racing which are needed for high places in the general classification.

Contador’s career has been marked by occasional doping allegations, the foremost of which, the Operación Puerto doping case, led his Astana-Würth team (a team unrelated in composition to the current Astana team, despite the same sponsor) to withdraw en masse from the 2006 Tour de France before it began. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but was also accused of doping after his victory in the race the following year. In September 2010, Contador announced that he had tested positive for clenbuterol in a control taken during that year’s Tour de France, but although he was suspended during an investigation, he was cleared by the Spanish cycling federation: as of March 2011, this decision is subject to review by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.