Michele Scarponi

Michele Scarponi

Scarponi at the 2014 Tour de San Luis
Personal information
Full name	Michele Scarponi
Nickname	L'Aquila di Filottrano (The Eagle of Filottrano)[1]
Born	(1979-09-25)25 September 1979 Jesi, Italy
Died	22 April 2017(2017-04-22) (aged 37) Filottrano, Italy
Height	1.74 m (5 ft 9 in)[2]
Weight	63 kg (139 lb)[2]
Team information
Discipline	Road
Role	Climbing specialist Domestique
Amateur teams
1988–1997	Pieralisi
1998–2000	Zalf–Euromobil–Fior
2001	Site–Frezza
Professional teams
2002	Acqua & Sapone–Cantina Tollo
2003–2004	Domina Vacanze–Elitron
2005–2006	Liberty Seguros–Würth
2007	Acqua & Sapone–Caffè Mokambo
2008–2010	Diquigiovanni–Androni
2011–2013	Lampre–ISD
2014–2017	Astana
Major wins
Grand Tours Giro d'Italia General classification (2011) Points classification (2011) 3 individual stages (2009, 2010) Stage races Tirreno–Adriatico (2009) Volta a Catalunya (2011) Giro del Trentino (2011)

Michele Scarponi (25 September 1979 – 22 April 2017) was an Italian road bicycle racer who rode professionally for the Acqua & Sapone–Cantina Tollo, Domina Vacanze–Elitron, Würth, Acqua & Sapone–Caffè Mokambo, Androni Giocattoli, Lampre–Merida and Astana teams from 2002 until his death in 2017. During his career, Scarponi had 21 professional victories.

He began cycling at age eight with a local team in the Marche region. Scarponi spent almost a decade with them, and won the junior Italian National Road Race Championships in 1997. He then spent four years at the amateur level with Zalf–Euromobil–Fior (1998–2000) and Site–Frezza (2001) before turning professional in 2002 with Acqua & Sapone–Cantina Tollo. For the next decade, Scarponi rode mainly for Italian teams with the exception of two-year spell with Spanish team Liberty Seguros–Würth in 2005 and 2006 (where he was a domestique during Roberto Heras' 2005 Vuelta a España success). After a doping ban, he had his first major victories in 2009 with Diquigiovanni–Androni: stage and general-classification wins in the Tirreno–Adriatico and two stage wins – both from breakaways – in the Giro d'Italia, where he was a domestique for Gilberto Simoni. He led the Androni Giocattoli team in a Grand Tour race for the first time at the 2010 Giro d'Italia, where he finished fourth overall and won a stage for the second successive year.

Scarponi spent three years with the Lampre–ISD team, from 2011 to 2013. In his first season, he won the Giro del Trentino and finished second to Alberto Contador in the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro d'Italia. Contador was stripped of those results in February 2012 after a positive test for clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France, and Scarponi was promoted to both victories; he also won the points classification in the Giro d'Italia. He finished fourth overall in the 2012 Giro d'Italia (losing a podium finish in the final-stage individual time trial) and the 2013 race, with no further stage wins. Scarponi joined the Astana team in 2014, initially as a team leader for that year's Giro d'Italia, before becoming a domestique for the remainder of his career for compatriots Vincenzo Nibali and Fabio Aru. In his final professional race, the 2017 Tour of the Alps, Scarponi had his first individual victory in three-and-a-half years.

During his professional career, he had two doping-related suspensions. Scarponi was implicated in 2006 in the Operación Puerto doping case conducted by the Guardia Civil in connection with Eufemiano Fuentes, Scarponi's team doctor when he rode for Liberty Seguros–Würth in 2005 and 2006. He admitted his involvement in May 2007 after meetings with the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI), and was suspended from racing until August 2008. Scarponi received a three-month ban in late 2012 after he admitted performing medical tests with Michele Ferrari, an Italian doctor linked to a number of doping cases in cycling who had received a lifetime ban from the sport by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) earlier that year.