Ivan Basso

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 lost another 40 minutes during the 14th stage, a mountain stage which included the Stelvio Pass, and thus effectively ended his bid for overall honors.

Ivan Basso (born 26 November 1977) is an Italian former professional road bicycle racer, who rode professionally between 1999 and 2015 for seven different teams.

As an amateur, he finished second in the road race at the 1995 UCI Juniors Road World Championships and his first big result was winning the under-23 road race at the 1998 UCI Road World Championships.

In his youth he fiercely competed with fellow Italian riders Giuliano Figueras and especially Danilo Di Luca who proclaimed he would have won the under-23 World Championship himself had it not been for the team tactics.

Before Basso could turn professional, his parents wanted to see him finish his Technical Geometry studies.

He turned professional with Davide Boifava's Riso Scotti–Vinavil team in 1999, where he rode his first Giro d'Italia.

He did not finish the three-week race, but he made it a priority to win it some day.

In 2000, with the team now called, he won his first professional victories in the Regio-Tour.

In 2001, he moved to under the guidance of sporting director Giancarlo Ferretti.

He scored several notable victories in 2001, and he made his Tour de France debut in the 2001 edition.

His attack on the Bastille Day stage prompted a five-man break-away which rode for the victory, but Basso crashed on a mountain descent and was forced to abandon the race.

His next two years were devoid of significant wins, even though he had promising rides in the Tour de France.

In the 2002 Tour de France, Basso finished 11th overall and won the young rider classification, the award presented to the best-placed rider in the general classification under the age of 25.

He impressed again in the 2003 Tour de France, finishing seventh overall in spite of receiving little help from his Fassa Bortolo teammates who, after dedicating their efforts in the first part of the race to help Alessandro Petacchi win four stages, had to pull out due to food poisoning, leaving only two riders to help Basso.

Despite his good results as the best placed Italian rider in the Tour de France, he was behind fellow Italian teammate Dario Frigo in the Fassa Bortolo pecking order for the biggest race in Italy, the Giro.

After the promising start to his Fassa Bortolo career, Basso's relationship with Ferretti turned sour.

Basso failed to respond well to the management methods of the "iron sergeant" who thought Basso did not win enough races.

Apart from the individual time trial stages, Basso had only lost around a single minute to winner Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour, and he was not short of new team offers.

Despite strong rumors sending him to the team, Basso moved to for the 2004 season, under guidance of team manager Bjarne Riis.

At, Basso was to fill the role as team captain, which Tyler Hamilton had left vacant at the Danish outfit, with the main aim to be a challenger in the Tour de France.

Basso's weakness was the time trial and before the 2004 season he and teammate Carlos Sastre trained in a wind tunnel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to improve their aerodynamics and positioning on the bike.

The time trial skill of Basso was one of the main points of improvements over the next years.

Basso looked impressive in the 2004 Tour de France, winning stage 12 ahead of eventual winner Lance Armstrong, his first victory since 2001.

He ended the season, participating with the Italian national team in the 2004 UCI Road World Championships in Verona, helping fellow Italian Luca Paolini get a bronze medal.

In the off-season, Team CSC was in a financial struggle.

Even as Bjarne Riis let riders who received superior offers from other teams leave, Basso did not move to the team even though an economically more lucrative contract was proposed.

January 2005 saw the death of Basso's mother, who died after battling cancer.

Basso went on to focus on the 2005 Giro d'Italia, in her memory, as his main aim for that season.

By both focusing on winning the Giro and the Tour, he was going against the trend of only aiming for one big race a season, a tactic most notably employed successfully by Lance Armstrong.

Basso wore the pink jersey as leader of the General classification in the Giro d'Italia until severe stomach problems caused him to lose the lead on stage 13 on the Passo delle Erbe.

He is a double winner of the Giro d'Italia, having won the race in 2006 for and 2010 for.

In 2007, Basso admitted to planning the use of blood doping and was suspended for two years.

His suspension ended on 24 October 2008, and he returned to racing two days later in the Japan Cup, where he placed a close third behind Damiano Cunego and Giovanni Visconti.

He later returned to racing in his home tour, and in 2010, he won his second Giro d'Italia, winning two stages along the way.

He was born in Gallarate, located in the province of Varese in Lombardy.

He grew up next door to Claudio Chiappucci, a former three-time stage winner in the Tour de France who was suspended for two years after being proven guilty of doping several times.

His overall time was hurt by relatively poor time trial results: he only finished 8th on the stage 16 time trial up the mountain Alpe d'Huez, where he was caught and passed by Armstrong, and 6th in the stage 19 time trial.

In all, he lost a combined 5 minutes and 13 seconds in the two stages.

His time loss on the last time trial effectively sent Basso down to third place behind Andreas Klöden, and Basso finished 6:40 behind overall winner Armstrong.