Alexander Vinokourov

Alexander Nikolayevich Vinokourov (Kazakh and Russian Александр Николаевич Винокуров; born 16 September 1973) is a Kazakhstani former professional road bicycle racer and the current general manager of UCI WorldTeam.

He is of Russian origin.

Vinokourov began cycling in 1984 as an 11-year-old, competing within the former Soviet Union.

In 1986 at age 13, Vinokourov became an athlete at a sports school in Almaty, then the capital of Kazakhstan, where he would train for the next five years.

While fulfilling his compulsory two-year military service requirement, he also trained as part of the Soviet national team.

Like some other top cyclists, he trained in Southern California during the winter months.

After Kazakhstan declared independence from the Soviet Union on 16 December 1991, Vinokourov continued to train and race, though as a member of the Kazakhstani national team.

He placed third behind Pascal Hervé of France in the Regio Tour amateur stage race in Germany in 1993 (Vinokourov later would win this race as a professional in 2004).

Other notable performances during these early years include winning two stages at the 1995 Tour of Ecuador and the overall GC at the 1996 Tour of Slovenia.

Vinokourov also competed in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, where he finished 53rd in the men's road race – an event he won 16 years later.

In the winter of 1996, Gilles Mas, directeur sportif of the Agrigel-La Creuse team, received a letter from the coach of the Kazakhstani national team, inquiring about the possibility of placing six Kazakhstani cyclists in European professional teams.

Mas agreed to take on the best two, but only on condition they first rode for the amateur Espoir Cycliste Saint-Étienne Loire (ECSEL) club for a year.

Mas and Pierre Rivory of ECSEL chose Andrey Mizurov and Vinokourov.

He moved to France in 1997 to finish his amateur career, and then turned professional there in 1998.

Vinokourov arrived in France on 22 March 1997, after a sub-par performance due to illness in the Tour de Langkawi as a member of Kazakhstan's national team.

While he readily adapted to Europe, Mizurov – who had won the inaugural time trial in the 1997 Tour de Langkawi – struggled with homesickness and contemplated a return to Kazakhstan.

Ultimately, in May 1997, Mizurov was replaced by Vinokourov's former classmate Andrei Kivilev, who was then racing with an amateur team in Burgos in Spain after having placed 29th in the previous year's Olympic road race.

In total, Vinokourov would win ten races for his amateur club, leading Vincent Lavenu to offer him a two-year professional contract to ride for Casino in 1998–1999.

Vinokourov won six races in 1998, his first year as a professional, including the Four Days of Dunkirk, the Tour de l'Oise, and stages in both the Tour of Poland and Circuit des Mines.

Mizurov would later turn professional in 1999 with, and he reunited with Vinokourov in 2007 at.

Vinokourov came second in a stage of the Tour of Auvergne two weeks after he arrived in Europe, and was best climber in a Coupe de France race a week later.

Then, during a trial for the Casino professional team at the Tour of Saône et Loire, he won three of the four stages.

In early 1999, he won the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana stage race, and three months later took two stages of the Midi Libre.

Vinokourov also won the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, beating the American Jonathan Vaughters along the way.

(He lost the yellow jersey to Vaughters after the Mont Ventoux time trial but regained it on the following mountain stage. )

In 2000, Vinokourov joined.

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.

After almost a decade as a professional, Vinokourov was caught blood doping during the 2007 Tour de France, which triggered the withdrawal of the entire Astana team from that year's race.

After a 2-year suspension from competition, he returned to cycling in August 2009, riding first for the national team of Kazakhstan and then rejoining Astana.

A serious crash during the 2011 Tour de France threatened to prematurely end Vinokourov's career for a second time, but he announced he would continue for one more season in 2012 – with an eye towards competing in the Olympic Games in London.

There, Vinokourov played the role of ultimate spoiler when he dramatically won the gold medal in the men's road race after breaking away in the closing miles with Colombian Rigoberto Urán.

Vinokourov retired after the Olympics and assumed management duties with for 2013.

He was sacked as the team principal of Astana-Premier Tech in June 2021.

However, in August 2021 Vinokourov returned as Team manager.

He is an honorary colonel in the Kazakh army but lives in France with his wife and children.

According to his father, Nikolay, Vinokourov began cycling at age 11 when he joined a branch of the Petropavl's Children and Youth Sports School.

The Frenchman Vincent Lavenu, who would later offer Vinokourov his first professional contract, reported that the young Kazakhstani was training on the road every day at age 11, and also competing in cyclo-cross.

In 2019, he was accused of race fixing by prosecutors in Liège but was later cleared of the charges.