Marco Pantani was an Italian road racing cyclist, widely regarded as the greatest climbing specialist in the history of the sport by measures of his legacy, credits from other riders, and records. He recorded the fastest ever climbs up the Tour's iconic venues of Mont Ventoux (46:00) and Alpe d'Huez (36:50), and other cyclists including Lance Armstrong and Charly Gaul have hailed Pantani's climbing skills. He is the last rider and only one of seven to ever win the Tour de France – Giro d'Italia double, doing so in 1998. He is the sixth of seven Italians, after Ottavio Bottecchia, Gino Bartali, Fausto Coppi, Gastone Nencini and Felice Gimondi, and before Vincenzo Nibali to win the Tour de France.
Jan Ullrich is a German former professional road bicycle racer. Ullrich won gold and silver medals in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. He won the 1999 Vuelta a España and the HEW Cyclassics in front of a home crowd in Hamburg in 1997. He 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. He retired in February 2007.
The 2004 Tour de France was a multiple stage bicycle race held from 3 to 25 July, and the 91st edition of the Tour de France. It has no overall winner—although American cyclist Lance Armstrong originally won the event, the United States Anti-Doping Agency announced in August 2012 that they had disqualified Armstrong from all his results since 1998, including his seven Tour de France wins from 1999 to 2005; the Union Cycliste Internationale confirmed the result.
HTC–Highroad was a former professional cycling team competing in international road bicycle races. Their last title sponsor was HTC Corporation, a Taiwanese manufacturer of smartphones but dissolved at the end of the 2011 season from a failure to find a new sponsor. High Road Sports was the management company of team manager Bob Stapleton. Past title sponsors include Columbia Sportswear and Deutsche Telekom.
Ivan Basso is an Italian former professional road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 1999 and 2015 for seven different teams. Basso, nicknamed Ivan the Terrible, was considered among the best mountain riders in the professional field in the early 21st century, and was considered one of the strongest stage race riders. He is a double winner of the Giro d'Italia, having won the race in 2006 for Team CSC and 2010 for Liquigas–Doimo.
Alexander Nikolayevich Vinokourov is a Kazakhstani former professional road bicycle racer and the current general manager of UCI WorldTeam Astana Qazaqstan Team. He is of Russian origin. As a competitor, his achievements include two bronze medals at the World Championships, four stage wins in the Tour de France, four in the Vuelta a España plus the overall title in 2006, two Liège–Bastogne–Liège monuments, one Amstel Gold Race, and the gold medal at the 2012 London Olympics Men's Road Race. Vinokourov is a past national champion of Kazakhstan, and a dual-medalist at the Summer Olympics. In 2007, he received a two-year ban from cycling for blood doping. In 2019, he was accused of race fixing by prosecutors in Liège but was later cleared of the charges.
Evgeni Valentinovich Berzin is a Russian former road cyclist.
Robert Julich, popularly called Bobby Julich, is an American former professional road bicycle racer who last rode for Team CSC in the UCI ProTour racing series. He got his international breakthrough when he finished 3rd overall in the 1998 Tour de France, becoming only the second American to finish on the podium. He is a strong time trialist who won a silver medal at the 2004 Olympic Individual Time Trial, and combined with his high versatility he has won a number of stage races on the international circuits including the 2005 edition of Paris–Nice. In September 2008, he announced his retirement as a professional cyclist.
Levi Leipheimer is an American former professional road racing cyclist. He was twice US national champion, winning the time trial title in 1999 and the road race in 2007, and is an Olympic medalist. Leipheimer was born and raised in Butte, Montana and resides in Santa Rosa, California. He is the patron of the widely attended King Ridge GranFondo, a mass participation ride in Sonoma County.
Carlos Sastre Candil is a former Spanish professional road bicycle racer and winner of the 2008 Tour de France. He consistently achieved outstanding results in the Vuelta a España and 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 of fifteen Grand Tours during his career, and finished on the podium of each of them. Sastre never tested positive for drugs, nor was he implicated in any doping investigation, even though he performed at the top level of cycling.
Gerolsteiner was a German road bicycle racing team in the UCI ProTour. It was sponsored by the mineral water company Gerolsteiner Brunnen and Specialized.
Abraham Olano Manzano is a Spanish retired professional road racing cyclist, who raced as a professional from 1992 to 2002. He won the World Road Championship in 1995, and the World Time Trial Championship in 1998, becoming the first male cyclist to win both.
Denis Nikolayevich Menshov is a former professional Russian road bicycle racer, who rode as a professional between 2000 and 2013. He was best known as a general classification rider, a climber and an accomplished time trialist. In 2005 he finished second in the Vuelta a España and in 2007 he finished as the champion. He also won the centenary Giro d'Italia in 2009 and finished second in the Tour de France in 2010 becoming the first Russian to do so. He was later disqualified from that Tour de France, as well as the 2009 and 2012 editions, owing to adverse biological passport findings.
Tommy Prim is a retired Swedish professional cyclist who rode for the Italian Bianchi team between the years of 1980 and 1986. In 1983 he became the first Scandinavian rider to win a classic race when he was victorious in Paris–Brussels, his other career highlights include winning Tirreno–Adriatico and the Tour de Romandie as well as twice finishing runner up in the Giro d'Italia in 1981 and 1982.
José Luis Rubiera Vigil is a Spanish former professional road bicycle racer. He last rode for the UCI ProTour team Team RadioShack. Rubiera won his first professional race at the 1997 Giro d'Italia, winning stage 19. He would win another stage in the 2000 Giro d'Italia and was part of three consecutive team time trial (TTT) stage wins in the Tour de France.
Team Polti was an Italian professional cycling team. It became an independent team in 1994, after the separation of Lampre-Polti, and was active until 2000. Team Polti began in 1994 with Gianluigi Stanga as directeur sportif and Vittorio Algeri and Claudio Corti as managers. The team used Fausto Coppi bikes. Other directeur sportifs included Giosuè Zenoni, Antonio Bevilacqua and Giovanni Fidanza. Team Polti gave Richard Virenque a chance after he was ejected from the 1998 Tour de France and while maintaining his innocence, his former teammates at Festina admitted taking EPO. Virenque joined Team Polti for the 1999 and 2000 seasons where he won the Mountains classification at the 1999 and 2000 Tour de France. In July 2007, Former Team Polti rider Jörg Jaksche admitted use of performance-enhancing products and alleged that this began when he was competing with Team Polti in 1997. Jaksche alleged that directeur sportif Gianluigi Stanga introduced him to EPO during the Tour de Suisse in 1997. Stanga immediately denied the accusations. Throughout its seven-year history, the team rode Fausto Coppi branded bikes and Santini provided the team with their striking cycling kit.
Bauke Mollema is a Dutch professional cyclist, who rides for UCI WorldTeam Lidl–Trek. He has finished in the top 10 in all three Grand Tours, with stage wins in the 2021 Tour de France, 2017 Tour de France, and the 2011 Vuelta a España, in which he finished third overall. His best result in the general classification in the Tour de France came in 2013 when he finished in 6th place. He won the Clásica de San Sebastián in 2016 and finished on the podium on three other occasions at the race. In 2019, he achieved the biggest win of his career in Il Lombardia.
Mikel Landa Meana is a Spanish professional road cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam Team Bahrain Victorious. His career breakthrough came at the 2015 Giro d'Italia where he won two stages and finished third overall.
Patrick Konrad is an Austrian racing cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Bora–Hansgrohe.
Brandon Alexander McNulty is an American cyclist who rides for UCI WorldTeam UAE Team Emirates. In the 2016 UCI Junior World Time Trial Championships McNulty became the fourth American junior world champion after Greg LeMond, Jeff Evanshine, and Taylor Phinney, winning the time trial by 35 seconds.
National Champion (1997, 2003)
