It’s perhaps logical that Alexander Vinokourov is currently best-known as the team manager of Astana Qazaqstan, given he has now held that role, barring a brief intermission in 2021, for over a decade.
But in his time as a pro, the 49-year-old Kazakh hit the headlines himself for good reasons, as his country’s first ever Grand Tour winner, Monument champion, and Olympic gold medallist, but also because of a positive test for blood doping in 2007.
Born in the former USSR, after being educated in a sports school in the Kazakh capital, Almaty, Vinokourov’s move to France as an amateur represented a pivotal moment in his career. Based in Saint Etienne, his success brought him to the attention of Vincent Lavenu, the longstanding manager of the Casino team, later to become better known when the squad was rebranded as AG2R.
Vinokourov flourished fast and winning the Critérium du Dauphiné in his second year as a pro in 1999 – as chance would have it, ahead of another future WorldTour team manager, Jonathan Vaughters – brought him to the attention of the high-flying Telekom squad.
Signed by the top German outfit in 2000, he quickly rewarded them with a breakaway stage win at that year’s Vuelta a España and a silver medal in the Sydney Olympic Games, sandwiched between German teammates Jan Ullrich, who scored gold, and Andreas Klöden, bronze.
His most notable season with the top German squad, 2003, first stood out thanks to a second overall victory in Paris-Nice, claimed in tragic circumstances after the death of close friend and fellow Kazakh rider Andre Kivilev during the trace. But Telekom, then rebranded as T-Mobile, offered Vinokourov opportunities to shine in the Tour de France as well, and he took them with both hands.
2003 also saw ‘Vino’ claim his country’s first-ever podium in cycling’s biggest Grand Tour as well as a dramatic stage win at Gap. Then in 2005, having claimed his first of two editions of Liège-Bastogne-Liège by outsprinting fellow breakaway rider Jens Voigt, he rounded off his time at T-Mobile with an epic Tour de France stage victory on the Champs Elysées, ripping up the usual script of bunch sprint finishes on Paris’ most famous boulevard.
However, the darker side of Vinokourov’s success story was soon to be revealed, with the first stormclouds gathering when Liberty Seguros, the team he signed for after T-Mobile, was itself heavily embroiled in the massive anti-doping investigation, Operación Puerto, in Spain.
Despite…
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