Carlos Sastre

Carlos Sastre Candil (pronounced [ˈkaɾ.los ˈsas.tɾe ˈkandil]; born 22 April 1975) is a former Spanish professional road bicycle racer and winner of the 2008 Tour de France.

Sastre established himself as a strong and stable climbing specialist, and after working to improve his individual time trial skills, he became a contender for the top GC spots in the Grand Tours.

[4] In fact, with respect to doping allegations and admissions that have surrounded Tour winners in recent decades, Sastre has been called "Don Limpio" ("Mr. Clean" in Spanish) by the press and others.

This resulted in his winning the 13th stage of the 2003 Tour de France, which Sastre won with a pacifier in his mouth, as a greeting to his infant daughter.

Before the 2004 season, Carlos Sastre and teammate Ivan Basso trained extensively to improve their individual time trial skills, making them better all-round riders.

However, as the captain of Team CSC's 2005 Vuelta a España campaign, Sastre finally reached the podium of a Grand Tour, finishing in third place behind Denis Menchov and initial winner Roberto Heras.

Heras was later disqualified due to a positive EPO test, making Sastre the de facto second placed rider of the competition.

Days before the 2006 Tour de France started in July, Team CSC suspended Ivan Basso as his name was brought up in the Operación Puerto doping case.

However, on the final time trial, which stretched 57 kilometres between Le Creusot and Montceau-les-Mines, Sastre finished 20th, losing several minutes to Pereiro, eventual overall winner Floyd Landis and Andreas Klöden, who took third place overall.

Coming into the 2008 Tour de France, Sastre was considered one of the favorites to win the race along with Australian Cadel Evans of Team Silence–Lotto, Spaniard Alejandro Valverde of Caisse d'Epargne and Russian Denis Menchov of Rabobank.

[12] Sastre, knowing that a slender lead over a strong time-trialist like Evans may not have been enough to secure overall victory going into the penultimate stage, sought to gain an advantage of at least a couple of minutes over his closest rivals.

[11] Following his overall victory in the general classification, Sastre found it hard to express his joy at finally achieving a boyhood dream;[11] It's very moving, I've dreamt of this since I was a child.

[19] In the 2011 Vuelta a España Sastre himself finished 20th overall, but helped his teammate Juan José Cobo, who was later, in 2019, considered ineligible for results due to the use of performance-enhancing drugs in the period between 2009 and 2011,[20] claim the overall title ahead of Chris Froome.

Tour 2005: Sastre during the stage 20 individual time trial .
Carlos Sastre entering Paris wearing the yellow jersey.