Ivan Basso

Ivan Basso
Nickname	Ivan the Terrible
Date of birth	11/26/1977
Country	Italy
Height	1.83m
Weight	70kg
Current team
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	All-rounder
Pro tour rank
Amateur years	1998
Amateur teams	GS San Pietro GS Gornatese Zalf-Euromobil-Fior Asics (stagiaire)
Pro years	1999-2000 2001-2003 2004-2006 2007
Pro teams	Riso Scotti Fassa Bortolo Team CSC Discovery Channel
Major wins	Giro d'Italia (2006), 5 stages Tour de France, 1 stage Critérium International (2006) Danmark Rundt (2005)
Updated	30 April 2007

Ivan Basso (born 26 November 1977) is an Italian professional road bicycle racer, most recently with Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team. Basso, nicknamed Ivan the Terrible, is among the best mountain riders in the professional field of the 2000s, and is considered one of the strongest stage race riders. He is a winner of the Giro d'Italia, having won the 2006 edition of the Italian Grand Tour whilst riding for Team CSC. However, in 2007 Basso admitted he was planning to use doping and was suspended for two years.

Basso is married to Micaela whom he has a son and daughter to.

Biography

He was born in Gallarate, in the province of Varese in Lombardy. There he grew up next door to Claudio Chiappucci, a former three-time stage winner in the Tour de France who later retired after being proven guilty of doping several times.

As an amateur, he finished second in the 1995 junior World Championships and his first big result was winning the U-23 World Championships in 1998. In his youth he fiercely competed with fellow Italian riders Giuliano Figueras and especially Danilo Di Luca who proclaimed he would have won the U-23 World Championship himself had it not been for the team tactics. Before Basso could turn professional, his parents wanted to see him finish his Technical Geometry studies. He turned professional with Davide Boifava's Riso Scotti-Vinavil team in 1999, where he rode his first Giro d'Italia. He did not finish the three-week race, but he made it a priority to win it some day. In 2000, with the team now called Amica Chips-Tacconi Sport, he won his first professional victories in the 2000 Regio Tour.

Promising results

In 2001, he moved to Fassa Bortolo under the guidance of sporting director Giancarlo Ferretti. He scored several notable victories in 2001, and he made his Tour de France debut in the 2001 edition. His attack on the Bastille Day stage prompted a five man break-away which rode for the victory, but Basso crashed on a mountain descent and was forced to abandon the race.

His next two years were devoid of significant wins, even though he had promising rides in the Tour de France. In the 2002 edition of the Tour de France, Basso finished 11th overall and won the white jersey, the award presented to the best-placed rider in the general classification under the age of 25.

Tour 2003: Basso during stage 12 (ITT). He finished 20th on the day and lost 4:24 to eventual winner Lance Armstrong.

He impressed again in the 2003 Tour, finishing seventh overall in spite of receiving little help from his Fassa Bortolo team-mates who, after dedicating their efforts in the first part of the race to help Alessandro Petacchi win four stages, had to pull out due to food poisoning, leaving only two riders to help Basso. Despite his good results as the best placed Italian rider in the Tour de France, he was behind fellow Italian teammate Dario Frigo in the Fassa Bortolo pecking order for the biggest race in Italy, the Giro. After the promising start to his Fassa Bortolo career, Basso's relationship with Ferretti turned sour. Basso failed to respond well to the management methods of the "iron sergeant" who thought Basso did not win enough races.

Apart from the individual time trial stages, Basso had only lost around a single minute to winner Lance Armstrong in the 2003 Tour, and he was not short of new team offers. Despite strong rumors sending him to team U.S. Postal Service, Ivan Basso moved to Team CSC for the 2004 season, under guidance of team manager Bjarne Riis. At Team CSC, Basso was to fill the role as team captain, which Tyler Hamilton had left vacant at the Danish outfit, with the main aim to be a challenger in the Tour de France. Ivan Basso's weakness was the time trial and before the 2004 season he and teammate Carlos Sastre trained in a wind tunnel at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to improve their aerodynamic positioning on the bike. The time trial skill of Ivan Basso was one of the main points of improvements over the next years.

Heir apparent

Tour 2004: Basso (left) and Armstrong at Basso's stage 12 win at La Mongie.

Basso looked impressive in the 2004 Tour de France, winning stage 12 ahead of eventual winner Lance Armstrong, his first victory since 2001. His overall time was hurt by relatively poor time trial results: he only finished 8th on the stage 16 time trial up the mountain Alpe d'Huez, where he was caught and passed by Armstrong, and 6th in the stage 19 time trial. In all, he lost a combined 5 minutes and 13 seconds in the two stages. His time loss on the last time trial effectively sent Basso down to third place behind Andreas Klöden, and Basso finished 6:40 behind overall winner Armstrong. When Ivan Basso learned, during the 2004 Tour, that his mother had pancreatic cancer, Armstrong was a personal support of Basso, as he had survived cancer himself. Basso held his daughter in his arms as he was honored in Paris and was resilient about his chances of a future Tour win. He ended the season, participating with the Italian national team in the 2004 World Championships in Verona, helping fellow Italian Luca Paolini get a Bronze Medal. In the off-season, Team CSC was in a financial struggle. Even as Bjarne Riis let riders leave who received superior offers from other teams, Basso did not move to team Discovery Channel even though an economically more lucrative contract was proposed.

January 2005 saw the death of Basso's mother, who died after battling cancer. Basso went on to focus on the 2005 Giro d'Italia, in her memory, as his main aim for that season. By both focusing on winning the Giro and the Tour, he was going against the trend of only aiming for one big race a season, a tactic most notably employed successfully by Lance Armstrong. Basso wore the leader's jersey, the maglia rosa, in the Giro until severe stomach problems caused him to lose the lead on stage 13. He lost another 40 minutes during the 14th stage, a mountain stage which included the Stelvio Pass, and thus effectively ended his bid for overall honors. No longer dangerous to the other main riders, Basso decided to continue in the race with the objective of winning individual stages. He did manage to achieve this goal at stage 17, a mountain stage. He also won the 18th stage, a time trial, ahead of team mate David Zabriskie, demonstrating the improvement he had made in this area.

Tour 2005: Basso after stage 20 (ITT). He finished 5th on the day and remained 2nd overall on the GC.

At the 2005 Tour de France, he started out comparatively weakly on stage 10, the first mountain stage of the race, where he trailed the front group by a minute. But for the rest of the race, Ivan Basso was once again the only rider to keep up with the race leader Lance Armstrong in the mountains, and on occasion he tried to pressure the eventual winner by going on the attack. Basso was still weaker in the time trials, although he had improved significantly when compared to 2004. He lost a collective 3:47 over two time trial stages, as Basso placed second overall in the Tour, 4:40 behind Lance Armstrong. During the 2005 Tour de France, Basso signed a new three-year contract with Team CSC.

2006 Giro d'Italia

Following his overall rank of 28th in the 2005 Giro, Basso returned to the Giro in 2006 with the intention to win. Following a good performance in the stage 1 time trial, Basso and his CSC teammates won the 5th stage, a team time trial. Basso's first solo stage victory came on the 8th stage, the first mountaintop finish of the Giro, where he countered an attack by Damiano Cunego and rode to the finish by himself. That victory also allowed him to gain enough time on his rivals to put him in the maglia rosa leader's jersey for the first time in the 2006 Giro, a jersey which he would hold on to for the remaining 13 stages.

Stage 11 was a long and flat individual time trial where Basso finished in second place, losing only to former two-time World Time Trial Championship winner Jan Ullrich, beating riders like the Italian national time trial champion Marco Pinotti. During the last week of the 2006 Giro, Basso became truly dominant, as he consistently beat his main rivals for the General Classification, and won stages 16 and 20 along the way. His victory in Stage 20, where he rode to a solo victory on the final ascent into Aprica after riding away from rival Gilberto Simoni, was notable when he, already sure of his victory, pulled out a picture of his newly born son Santiago, and held it aloft as he crossed the finish line. Santiago Basso had been born the previous day, and Basso had not yet seen his son in the flesh, having been given the picture only hours before the stage started. When rival Simoni rolled across the line over a minute behind Basso, he was clearly upset at being beaten and made a remark that Basso's dominance at that year's Giro was "extra-terrestrial." Basso eventually finished 9 minutes 18 seconds up on the second placed rider, José Enrique Gutiérrez, the largest margin of victory in the Giro d'Italia since 1965. After the last stage of the 2006 Giro d'Italia, Basso declared that he would continue along his pre-season plan to also ride the 2006 Tour de France.

Operación Puerto and the 2006 Tour de France

On 30 June 2006, the management of the Tour de France announced at a press conference that a number of riders, including Ivan Basso, would not be riding in the 2006 Tour de France due to rumours of blood doping stemming from the Operación Puerto investigation in Spain. According to the investigation, Basso was allegedly given blood doping by the Dr. Fuentes in a Spanish clinic. No formal charges had been raised, but following an agreement between the managers of all the ProTour teams, any rider under suspicion of doping would not be allowed to start in ProTour races. This forced CSC to remove Basso from their squad for the 2006 Tour.

Speculation in the Italian press suggested that should Basso not be banned he would be joining the Discovery Channel team. Team CSC described these suggestions as just rumours. Later, CSC manager Bjarne Riis was reported stating that it was unlikely that Basso could return to CSC without proving he had no contact with Dr. Fuentes, as Basso's contract specified that he could receive no outside medical assistance. Riis conceded that it might be impossible for Basso to prove beyond doubt. Rumours also talked about Basso moving to Team Milram or Barloworld (a non-ProTour team). The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) proceedings commenced in late August 2006.

Basso leaves CSC, later joins Team Discovery Channel

On 18 October 2006, Team CSC announced that his contract had been terminated by mutual consent. On 27 October, 2006, Basso was acquitted for any involvement in the Operation Puerto events by the committee, due to insufficient evidence.

On 9 November 2006 Ivan Basso announced he was joining Lance Armstrong's former team, Discovery Channel. The announcement was made in Austin Texas, and Basso joined the team on 3 December 2006 for the first unofficial training camp. Basso rode for Levi Leipheimer during the 2007 Tour of California

Puerto case reopened

On 24 April 2007, Basso was suspended by Discovery Channel when the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) reopened his case. On 30 April 2007 Team Discovery Channel announced that Basso would be released from his contract. Basso requested to leave the team citing "personal reasons related to the re-opened investigation by the Italian Olympic Committees (CONI)." Basso met with the General Manager of Team Discovery Channel, Bill Stapleton, and Johan Bruyneel, the Team Director, and the two agreed to allow Basso to leave the team.

See also

Basso appeared before the Italian Olympic Committee on 2 May 2007. In a later press conference he stated it was "attempted doping", and that while he had not actually undergone doping, he was "fully aware that an attempt at doping is tantamount to doping" and that "[he would] serve [his] suspension and then return to race."

On 15 June 2007, Basso received a two-year ban. The time he had already spent under team suspension whilst riding for CSC and temporary suspension since leaving Discovery were taken into consideration which means his ban will end on 24 October 2008.

Career highlights

2007 – Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team

5th GC Mt Seaview Tour

2006 – Team CSC

1st overall and Stage 5 (ITT), 8, 16 and 20 wins – Giro d'Italia.

Azzurri d'Italia classification winner

1st overall and Stage 2 win – Critérium International

Stage 2B – Circuit de la Sarthe

2005 – Team CSC

Stages 17 and 18 – Giro d'Italia

1st overall and Stage 1, 2, 3, 5 wins – Danmark Rundt

2nd overall – Tour de France

2004 – Team CSC

3rd overall and Stage 12 win, Tour de France

Giro dell'Emilia

Grand Prix Jyske Bank

2003 – Fassa Bortolo

7th overall – Tour de France

2002 – Fassa Bortolo

11th overall – Tour de France

Maillot blanc winner of Young rider classification

2001 – Fassa Bortolo

Stage 1 – Tour Méditerranéen

Stage 5 – Bicicleta Vasca

Stage 5 – Österreich Rundfahrt

2000 – Amica Chips

Stages 1 and 3B – Regio Tour

1999 – Riso Scotti-Vinavil

1998 – Amateur

U-23 World Cycling Championships

External links

• Official website (Italian)
• Unofficial Ivan Basso Fan Page (English) / Archived Version
• Profile at Team CSC (source for results)