Vincenzo Nibali ready to defend his Vuelta title
Vincenzo Nibali is an Italian professional cyclist who is also known as ‘The Shark’. Nibali’s first major win was at GP Ouest-France in 2006 as he impressed many with a tremendous display of his skills but as per the experts he was capable to perform even
better in the stage races and rightly so as Nibali won the Grand event, Vuelta a Espana in 2010.
At the age of 16 he moved to Tuscany to adapt cycling as a profession and stayed with Carlo Franceschi, his former directeur sportif and Nibali still lives at the same house.
He won the GP Industria e Artigianato di Lanciano, Giro di Toscana and the Young Rider Classification at Giro del Trentino in 2007 with a 20th position at the Tour de France 2008.
He came up as a better cyclist every year and his hard work paid off as he managed to dominate the 7th overall position at the Tour de France, 2009. Vincenzo’s biggest win of his career so far was in 2010 as he dominated the Vuelta a Espana 2010
and finished the race at first position.
The 26-year-old was looking good to win his home tour Giro d’ Italia 2011 as he finished third after a close fight with his countryman Scarponi for the second.
Nibali finished at 11th position during the final 26 Kilometre stage 21 of the Grand Tour while his Italian opponent Michele Scarponi finished the final stage of Giro d’ Italia 2011 at the 17th position.
Alberto Contador of team Saxo Bank Sungard won the event as he finished the race in 84:05:14 seconds at the first position and Michele Scarponi managed to beat Vincenzo Nibali with 46 seconds as Scarponi finished second at the Grand event.
Team Liquigas-Cannondale finished at the 14th position after the final general classifications while they secured the 8th slot at the Super teams classification with 239 points at the Giro d’ Italia 2011.
Nibali will be racing in the third and last Grand tour of the year as he shed some light on the Vuelta a Espana 2010 he said, “Fabulous memories from the celebrations in Madrid come back to my mind, I’m coming back to Spain to win again.”
Nibali finished the final 85 Kilometre Stage at Vuelta, a Espana 2011 at the 21st position but he had an overall tour lead as he managed to win the first Grand tour of his career. Vincenzo Nibali finished the Vuelta in a total time of 87:18:13
with Ezequiel Mosquera at second and Peter Velits at third position. Vincenzo secured third place in the point’s classification as he scored 120 points with a leading first position at combination classification with 9 points.
The Italian commented about the mountain stages in the Vuelta this year as he mentioned, “The end of second week reminds me of the Giro when we had three big mountain stages in a row with the Grossglockner, the Zoncolan and the Gardeccia” he added, “I’ll
have to improve compared to the Giro because I paid for my efforts at the Gardeccia. I can’t allow myself to lose again.”
Nibali will be leading his team Liquigas-Cannondale in the Vuelta a Espana 2011 to defend his title and cyclists to accompany him in the Vuelta are Capecchi Eros, Caruso Damiano, Da Dalto Mauro, Marangoni Alan, Agnoli Valerio, Bellotti Francesco, Nerz Dominique
and Sagan Peter.
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