Davide Rebellin

Davide Rebellin (9 August 1971 – 30 November 2022) was an Italian professional road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 1992 and 2022 for twelve different teams, taking more than sixty professional wins.

He was considered one of the finest classics specialists of his generation with more than fifty top ten finishes in UCI Road World Cup and UCI ProTour classics.

Born in San Bonifacio in the province of Verona, Rebellin turned professional in 1992 and came to the attention of the cycling world with a string of strong performances during his early years.

He suffered from asthma, a disease that affected his whole career.

In 1996 he gained further notice when he thrived in the 1996 Giro d'Italia.

Riding for Team Polti, Rebellin took stage seven and with it led in the general classification, giving him the pink jersey.

He held the lead for six stages and finished the Grand Tour sixth overall.

Years later he said of the race, "I have won Classics, but the first important win was in the 1996 Giro, winning the maglia rosa with the stage."

In 1997 he scored his first UCI Road World Cup victories by winning the Clásica de San Sebastián and the Grand Prix de Suisse.

Over the following years he won many Italian classic races, such as the Giro del Veneto and Tre Valli Varesine.

In 2001, he won the Tirreno–Adriatico stage race.

Rebellin was best known in the cycling world for his 2004 season, when he won a then unprecedented treble with wins in Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège.

He also won stage races such as Paris–Nice and Tirreno–Adriatico, and a stage in the Giro d'Italia.

During the 2004 season he amassed seven victories, including what was at the time an unprecedented treble win in the Ardennes classics, with wins in the Amstel Gold Race, La Flèche Wallonne and Liège–Bastogne–Liège.

Despite these achievements, Rebellin did not win the 2004 UCI Road World Cup, which went to Paolo Bettini.

In 2005, Rebellin fell short of his triumphs of 2004, but posted yet another solid year.

Although he generally concentrated on classics and small tours, he was part of the team in the 2005 Tour de France.

With a number of solid performances throughout the season but without any individual victories, Rebellin finished as the third-highest ranked rider in the UCI ProTour rankings.

Apart from the ProTour races, he only won one race in the 2005 season, taking the first stage of the Brixia Tour.

Rebellin began the 2007 season leading Paris–Nice until Alberto Contador moved him to second in the final stage to Nice.

He later finished second in Amstel Gold Race and won the Flèche Wallonne, which made him the oldest ever winner of an UCI ProTour race.

He finished second in the UCI ProTour behind Cadel Evans.

Rebellin served a two-year suspension for testing positive for Mircera at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Rebellin triumphed early in 2008 with an overall victory in the Paris–Nice.

He won the stage race by three seconds, ahead of Rinaldo Nocentini.

He went on to win the Tour du Haut Var and show strongly in the Ardennes classics with a second place in the Liège–Bastogne–Liège.

Rebellin finished second in the men's road race at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing having been part of a six-man breakaway group, but his silver medal was revoked in light of his doping sentence by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Only one rider, Philippe Gilbert, has repeated this feat since, in 2011.

Rebellin also scored a number of podium places in top races such as Paris–Nice and the Clásica de San Sebastián.

On 16 August 2011, Rebellin took his first victory after returning from his doping suspension, winning Tre Valli Varesine four seconds ahead of Domenico Pozzovivo.

On 28 April 2015, at 43 years old, Rebellin won the queen stage of the Tour of Turkey, a mountaintop finish concluding in Elmali.

He beat riders twenty years younger than him to accomplish this feat.

With that performance, he grabbed the leader's jersey, but lost it to Kristijan Đurasek on Stage 6.

He had to abandon on the last stage since he crashed after hitting a dog.

In 2017, Rebellin rode for the team, winning three races.

After one season with the team, he moved to for the 2018 season.

He finished his supposed last race in 18th place, almost five minutes behind new Italian champion Davide Formolo.

One day later, Rebellin announced that he would continue his career.

He rode for the team up to February 2019, when his contract was terminated by mutual consent.

In April 2019 he announced that he had rejoined the team and that he would retire from competition after the Italian National Road Race Championships at the end of June.