Diego Ulissi

Diego Ulissi (born 15 July 1989) is an Italian road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam.

Ulissi is a versatile, all-round cyclist who often wins stages and one-day races from breakaways and over hilly terrain.

Born in Cecina, Ulissi won the Junior World Road Race Championships in 2006 and 2007.

He is the second cyclist ever – after Giuseppe Palumbo – to achieve two consecutive World Junior Road titles.

He was awarded stage 17 of the 2011 Giro d'Italia after Giovanni Visconti was relegated for improper sprinting.

In June 2011, he recorded his first major professional victories.

He won Stage 17 in his first appearance at the Giro d'Italia after Giovanni Visconti was relegated for improper sprinting.

Ulissi and Visconti were part of a breakaway that survived to the end of the hilly stage, and Visconti shoved Ulissi during their sprint to the finish line.

Ulissi later won the queen stage and the overall classification in that year's Tour of Slovenia.

During the 2012 season, Ulissi again raced the Giro d'Italia, placing fourth in the young rider competition.

Ulissi took his second World Tour-level win during the first stage of the 2013 Tour de Pologne, out-sprinting Darwin Atapuma and Rafał Majka from a breakaway group of 15 riders.

He then won three Italian classic races in the fall.

In Milano–Torino, Ulissi attacked away from a small group of favourites, including defending champion Alberto Contador, on the final climb to take victory.

He won an uphill sprint in Coppa Sabatini a week later.

Finally, days after, Ulissi again jumped away from the leading group in the closing metres of the Giro dell'Emilia to take victory.

Ulissi took more stage victories in 2014, despite underperforming during the spring classics.

He won the second stage of the Tour Down Under, launching an early sprint to beat stage favourite Simon Gerrans.

Ulissi won two stages in the Giro d'Italia.

On Stage 5, he launched a late attack against a group of stage and general classification favourites, and he narrowly beat the Giro's overall contenders to the finish of the race's first major mountain stage.

In June 2014 it was announced that Ulissi had failed a drug test on Stage 11 of that year's Giro d'Italia.

He tested positive for the asthma drug salbutamol, which is found in Ventolin.

Ulissi had received permission to use Ventolin to treat a bronchospasm.

However, the test indicated that he had almost twice the permitted concentration of salbutamol in his urine.

He had also received paracetamol from a race doctor after he was involved in a crash during the stage.

Both Ulissi and the team doctor denied using his inhaler to gain a competitive advantage, claiming that Ulissi had taken only two puffs before the start of the stage.

and the head coach of Italy's national team, Davide Cassani, expressed support for Ulissi.

Nevertheless, he was provisionally suspended from and did not attend the Italian national team's training camp after the positive test was announced.

After serving a doping-related suspension that ended in March 2015, Ulissi came back to win Stage 7 of the Giro d'Italia in Fiuggi.

In 2016, Ulissi returned to the Giro d'Italia and won two stages.

On Stage 4, Ulissi broke away from the leading group to beat Tom Dumoulin by five seconds.

On Stage 11, he out-sprinted race leader Bob Jungels in the closing metres of the stage.

Ulissi won the first individual time trial of his professional career on Stage 2 of the Tour of Slovenia, beating eventual general classification winner Rein Taaramäe over a short and hilly parcours.

That August, Ulissi took the third stage and the overall classification at the Czech Cycling Tour.

In June 2017, he was named in the startlist for the Tour de France.

He out-sprinted Jesús Herrada and Tom-Jelte Slagter to win the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, his first World Tour-level win in the 2017 season.

Ulissi won the general classification in the Presidential Tour of Turkey, his first overall victory in a World Tour stage race.

In that race, he took the leader's jersey in a solo hilltop stage victory on Stage 4.

Ulissi won Stage 5 of the 2018 Tour de Suisse, overpowering Enric Mas in a sprint to the line.

In 2019, Ulissi took victory in the Gran Premio di Lugano in Switzerland.

He also won Stage 3 and the general classification in the Tour of Slovenia and the test event for the road race at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.