.jpg)
Alejandro Valverde Belmonte (born 25 April 1980) is a Spanish cyclist, who competed as a professional in road bicycle racing from 2002 to 2022, and now competes in gravel cycling for the Movistar Team Gravel Squad.[6]
During his road racing career, Valverde took 133 professional victories, with some of his biggest wins having been the Vuelta a España in 2009, the Critérium du Dauphiné in 2008 and 2009, the Tour of the Basque Country in 2017, the Volta a Catalunya in 2009, 2017 and 2018, Liège–Bastogne–Liège in 2006, 2008, 2015 and 2017, La Flèche Wallonne in 2006, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017, the Clásica de San Sebastián in 2008 and 2014, the 2006 and 2008 UCI ProTours, the 2014 and 2015 UCI World Tours, and the road race in the 2018 World Championships. Prior to his Worlds win, he already held the record for most medals won at World Championships – he twice collected the silver medal in the World Championships, in 2003 and 2005, as well as the bronze four times in 2006, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Valverde entered thirty-two Grand Tours, finished twenty-seven of them and placed in the top ten of the general classification on twenty occasions. He also shares the record for most wins in the Points classification in the Vuelta a España (four times) with Sean Kelly and Laurent Jalabert.
Valverde is rare in combining different specialties in road bicycle racing, being a strong climbing specialist, sprinter and a good time-trialist. The online database Cycling Ranking ranks him as the 3rd most successful cyclist of all time.
- ^ a b "Alejandro Valverde". Movistar Team. Movistar Team. Retrieved 6 July 2019.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
rutawas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Movistar Team launches 2019 season with highest hopes". Telefónica. Telefónica, S.A. 18 December 2018. Retrieved 4 January 2019.
- ^ "Movistar Team ready to open new era in 2020". Movistar Team. Abarca Sports SL. 19 December 2019. Retrieved 3 January 2020.
- ^ "Movistar Team". UCI.org. Union Cycliste Internationale. Archived from the original on 1 January 2021. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
- ^ Fotheringham, Alasdair. "Alejandro Valverde returns to racing with the Movistar Gravel Squad". Yahoo Sports. Yahoo. Retrieved 6 June 2023.
Cite error: There are <ref group=N> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=N}} template (see the help page).