47-year-old Davide Rebellin puts off plans to retire from professional cycling

Davide Rebellin, forty-seven, is doing away with plans for retirement after fanatics at the Italian National Championships prompted him to keep.

Rebellion, winner of all 3 Ardennes Classics in 2004, planned to give up his profession with the championships on Sunday. He completed 18th and announced on Facebook he would retain.

“A massive thank you to the various enthusiasts who supported me on the Italian Championship,” he wrote. “It changed into a tight race, for the heat and hard from the start. I’m nonetheless happy with my 18th place.

“So lots of you requested me if this was my closing race or if I’d continue. The emotions and heat that I felt are too sturdy, and my choice to continue to repay this love is just too robust. I want to have some good emotions again and pass them directly to you also.

“So I determined to race once more because regardless of the idea of being a helper, I can sense my heart beat.”

He races with Croatian crew Meridiana-Kamen, having recently finished the Tour of Slovenia. Next year, he could run with a brand new Hungarian Professional Continental team, in keeping with La Gazzetta Dello Sport.

It could preserve a profession that started in 1992. Rebellin won his first victory within the Giro d’Italia level to Monte Sirino in 1996 and the Ardennes triple in 2004. He has additionally taken universal victories in prestigious week-long stage races Tirreno-Adriatico, in 2001, and Paris-Nice, in 2008.

His career becomes marked using an EPO doping case after the 2008 Beijing Olympic avenue race, the season he had raced for Gerolsteiner. He had to go back the silver medal he had received in the back of Samuel Sánchez.

Sánchez changed into this year became suspended for two years for the use of human boom hormones in 2017.

Rebellin’s 18th vicinity on Sunday got here in the back of new Italian Champion Davide Formolo (Bora-Hansgrohe), 21 years younger. His remaining win came closing year in level 2 of the Tour International de l. A. Wilaya d’Oran.

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Liberté? Yes. Egalité? Of course. Velocité? Why not – for a future driven not by using the manner of profit or a monetary machine riding our planet to destruction, however through ourselves. A Révolution in every person’s language.