Steve Cummings

Stephen Philip Cummings (born 19 March 1981 ) is an English former racing cyclist, who rode professionally between 2005 and 2019 for the, , , , and squads, and rode for Great Britain at the Summer Olympic Games, the UCI Road World Championships, and the UCI Track Cycling World Championships.

He recuperated from those injuries and competed in the Tour de France, where he was a domestique to his leader Cadel Evans and finished 95th overall.

In the Vuelta a España, he gained his first Grand Tour stage victory.

On Stage 13, he broke away with six other riders after the first hour of racing.

The break made it through on the mainly flat course and he attacked with about 4 km to race, creating a gap.

He held on to his lead and won by four seconds over the two chasers, Cameron Meyer of and 's Juan Antonio Flecha.

He completed his season with a stage victory on the final day of the Tour of Beijing, getting the better of Ryder Hesjedal in a sprint à deux in Pinggu.

In 1999, riding for Birkenhead North End CC as a junior, aged 17, he won the Eddie Soens Memorial Road Race, a handicap race open to all categories.

It remains the only time that a junior rider has won the race.

He went on to take the junior British National Road Race Championships that year.

At the 2004 Olympics in Athens Cummings and the Great Britain team won the silver medal in the team pursuit and achieved a time of 3:59.866 in the heats.

On the track, Cummings won gold medals in the team pursuit at both the 2005 UCI Track Cycling World Championships and the 2006 Commonwealth Games, and a silver medal in the same event at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

Since retiring from racing, Cummings has worked as a directeur sportif for UCI WorldTeam.

Cummings was born in Clatterbridge on the Wirral Peninsula in Northwest England and grew up in the nearby village of Pensby.

Representing his country Cummings won the team pursuit at the 2005 UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles and at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne with the British and English cycling teams respectively.

He rode for in 2005 and 2006, recording second-place finishes at the 2005 British National Road Race Championships and the 2006 Trofeo Laigueglia, to Russell Downing and Alessandro Ballan respectively.

He also took bronze in the individual pursuit at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

In 2007 he switched to, making his first start at a Grand Tour by riding the Giro d'Italia – as a late replacement for defending race winner Ivan Basso.

With folding at the end of the 2007 season, Cummings moved to for the 2008 season – joining his compatriot Geraint Thomas at the team.

In his second start with the team, Cummings won stage 2 of February's Giro della Provincia di Reggio Calabria.

He again rode the Giro d'Italia, recording a fourth-place stage result on the final summit finish of the race at Monte Pora, having been a part of the breakaway.

In the second half of the season, he recorded second-place overall finishes at the Danmark Rundt and the Tour of Britain, but did take his second win of the year at the Coppa Bernocchi, in a three-rider sprint.

The following year saw Cummings take a single victory in the third Giro del Capo challenge, with other top-five finishes at the Giro della Provincia di Reggio Calabria (fifth), and the Coppa Bernocchi (fourth).

Despite this, folded at the end of the season.

Cummings was one of four former riders to join new British-based for the 2010 season, signing a two-year contract.

His best result during the season was a fourth-place finish at the Grand Prix d'Ouverture La Marseillaise in January.

In 2011, he had arguably his most successful professional race to that point at February's Volta ao Algarve.

He won stage three in a mountain-top finish ahead of Alberto Contador, taking the overall lead of the race which he held until the final individual time trial; he finished the race in seventh place.

In September, Cummings finished second to teammate Alex Dowsett at the British National Time Trial Championships, before finishing second overall in the Tour of Britain.

He was part of the Great Britain team that helped Mark Cavendish win the road race at the UCI Road World Championships in Denmark, and then finished fourth overall in the first Tour of Beijing.

In September 2011, Cummings signed a contract with the for the 2012 season.

The following February, Cummings broke his pelvis in an accident while competing in the Volta ao Algarve.

In April, bad luck struck again when he fractured his left wrist in the Tour of the Basque Country.

During his professional road racing career, Cummings took seventeen victories, including Grand Tour stage wins at the 2012 Vuelta a España, the 2015 Tour de France and the 2016 Tour de France.

Cummings did not take an individual win in 2013, with his only win coming as part of the squad that won the stage two team time trial at the Tour of Qatar.

At the start of the 2014 season, Cummings took second place at the Dubai Tour behind teammate Taylor Phinney, before winning the individual time trial stage and the general classification at the Tour Méditerranéen, recording his first stage race victory.

He also represented England at the Commonwealth Games, finishing in seventh place in the road time trial.

In October 2014, Cummings announced that he would be joining for the 2015 season.

In his first race with the team, Cummings won the Trofeo Andratx-Mirador d'Es Colomer one-day race, held as part of the season-opening Vuelta a Mallorca; he attacked on the final climb of the race, and was able to fend off Alejandro Valverde in the closing metres for the win.

He won both the British National Road Race Championships and the British National Time Trial Championships in 2017, and also won stages of the Tour of Beijing, Tirreno–Adriatico, Tour of the Basque Country and Critérium du Dauphiné races at UCI World Tour level.