Vincenzo wins Tour de France
29 July 2014 5:17 AM IST
When Vincenzo Nibali pulled on the race winner’s yellow jersey on the podium beneath the Arc du Triomphe on the Champs Elysees in Paris, he was fulfilling in some ways his own destiny. The 29-year-old Sicilian became the first Italian since Marco Pantani in 1998 to win the Tour de France but his success will have surprised no-one who knew him as a child. The Shark, as he has long been known, was always convinced about where his true calling lay.
Ever since falling in love with cycling as a boy in Messina, he not only had his heart set on becoming a professional cyclist, he was convinced of the fact. He once told a surgeon sewing up a gash in his thigh to ‘do a good job because I’m going to be a professional cyclist.’ Even back then Nibali, known as the best and most fearless descender in the peloton, was a dare-devil whose escapades regularly necessitated a trip to hospital to be patched up. According to his mother Giovanna, ‘all the doctors knew his name’ at the local hospital.
It was just such single-minded determination that would eventually produce the Tour de France champion. When he set out at the beginning of this season, Nibali had only one goal in his mind. ‘All season I was focussing on the Tour while other riders tried to be strong in every race,’ he said.
Ever since falling in love with cycling as a boy in Messina, he not only had his heart set on becoming a professional cyclist, he was convinced of the fact. He once told a surgeon sewing up a gash in his thigh to ‘do a good job because I’m going to be a professional cyclist.’ Even back then Nibali, known as the best and most fearless descender in the peloton, was a dare-devil whose escapades regularly necessitated a trip to hospital to be patched up. According to his mother Giovanna, ‘all the doctors knew his name’ at the local hospital.
It was just such single-minded determination that would eventually produce the Tour de France champion. When he set out at the beginning of this season, Nibali had only one goal in his mind. ‘All season I was focussing on the Tour while other riders tried to be strong in every race,’ he said.
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