Spaniard Alberto Contador won his first ever Tour de France title in 2007. There is a lot common between Contador and seven time Tour winner Lance Armstrong. Only three years before winning his maiden title, this Discovery Channel rider met with an accident. A crash in the Tour of Asturias stage race in 2004 landed him in hospital, where doctors discovered he was about to suffer a brain hemorrhage. After a life-saving operation and six months he returned to training.

Biography

Alberto Contador Velasco was born in Madrid, on December 6th, 1982. He was the third of four brothers. Thanks to the older brother he discovered his interest in cycling at a young age. Previously, he had practiced football and athletics – sports in which he was good at too – although he finally chose cycling to became a professional.

At the age of 24, while he was contesting in the first stage of the ‘Vuelta a Asturias’, he met with an accident. That season he did not return to compete anymore; but, after an arduous recovery, Alberto returned to cycling in 2005 and, just on the first race, the ‘Tour Down Under’ in Australia, obtained the victory in the most important stage. That same year, he made his tour debut and raced to a respectable 31^st position. The year 2006 was less rosy for Contador. His entire Liberty-Seguros team was evicted from the Tour de France after five of their riders were implicated in the Puerto doping scandal. Contador was cleared by a Spanish court. His fortune, once again, changed for the better in 2007 with him winning the Tour de France title. He again won the Tour de France title in 2009. He is one of the six riders to have won all three Grand Tours of road cycling