Vincenzo Nibali is one of the biggest names in cycling. But at the age of 37 he is no longer one of the youngest athletes – and will soon say goodbye.
Former Tour de France winner Vincenzo Nibali wants to retire from professional cycling at the end of the year. The 37-year-old Italian announced this on Wednesday after the fifth stage of the Giro d’Italia, which had led to his hometown of Messina in Sicily. “This will be my last Giro, at the end of the season I’ll probably stop professional cycling,” said Nibali, who drives for the Astana racing team, on Italian television with tears in his eyes.
The driver, nicknamed the “Shark of Messina”, had won all three major tours in his career: the 2014 Tour de France, the Giro in 2013 and 2016, and the Vuelta in Spain in 2010. He was also successful in the cycling classics Milan-Sanremo (2018) and Tour of Lombardy (2015, 2017).
“I’ve achieved a lot in my career,” he said. “I’ve invested a lot in cycling and maybe now is the moment when I can give back to family and friends a little bit of what I sacrificed for two wheels.”