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A sports fan from an early age, Alberto Contador played football and athletics before growing an interest in cycling: under the influence of his older brother, he finally chose to dedicate himself to this sport. At age 15, he joined the Pinto cycling team in the Cadet category and only one year later he became part of the Real Velo Club Portillo team in Madrid. In this latter club he began to demonstrate his cycling skills, especially in the sloping sections. As a matter of fact, he began to reap his first victories during his second year competing in the youth category, almost all of them being in mountain stages and competitions.
Alberto Contador stood out in several youth category races and as early as 2002 he won the sub-23 time trial Spanish Championship. He joined the ONCE-Eroski the following year: in his first team as a professional he got his victory in the time trial of the Tour of Poland.
In 2004 he suffered a fall that forced him to interrupt his activity until 2005. Once recovered, he competed in Australia’s Tour Down Under, where he won the queen stage.
While in the Discovery Channel team in 2007, Alberto Contador won the Tour de France: he was the sixth Spaniard to ever win the main cycling race. From that moment on he was unstoppable: in 2008, after changing teams to Astana, he won both the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España. Like this, Alberto Contador achieved the Triple Crown of Cycling, which meant that he was paired with some of the greatest cyclists in history as he became the fifth rider to ever win the three great races of the world circuit.
Before Contador, only legendary names like Anquetil, Gimondi, Hinault and Merckx had achieved such greatness.
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