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Danilo Di Luca is a professional cyclist from Italy who was born January 2, 1976. Di Luca finished the 2006 season ranked number 75 on the UCI ProTour.
Danilo Di Luca (born January 2, 1976) is an Italian professional road racing cyclist. He rides for the Liquigas cycling team on the UCI ProTour.
Born in Spoltore, province of Pescara, Di Luca began his professional career in 1998 in the Italian Riso Scotti Team. However, his first pro win did not come until 1999, when, after moving to team Cantina Tollo-Alexia, he won the first stage of the Giro d'Abruzzo. He still remained in the team after its fusion with the Acqua & Sapone structure, taking important wins in 2001 such as the fourth stage of the Giro d'Italia and the Autumn classic Giro di Lombardia. Then, he was transferred to team Saeco-Longoni Sport.
During his time at Saeco-Longoni he had a long stroke of bad luck, which began when he lost the Vuelta al País Vasco on the last stage, a mountain time trial in which Andreas Klöden took the lead and the final win. Combined with a succession of injuries and a lack of confidence of the team directors, his performance suffered for many years.
He then switched to the newly formed Liquigas-Bianchi team in the 2005 season, with teammates such as Mario Cipollini former world champion in Zolder, Dario Cioni who was fourth on the previous edition of the Giro, Stefano Garzelli winner of the 2000 Giro, and Magnus Bäckstedt winner of Paris-Roubaix 2004. He was the leader of the team for the spring classics campaign.
His first victory in this season came in the first stage of the UCI ProTour race Vuelta al País Vasco, where he also took the overall win after defeating Aitor Osa in the final time trial. Then he went on to execute a great demonstration of powerplay in the spring classics, where he won the foggy Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne, taking the UCI ProTour Leader's White Jersey from Belgian Tom Boonen. Only an exhibition by Jens Voigt and the winner Alexandre Vinokourov prevented Danilo from emulating Davide Rebellin's feat of one year before, when the Italo-Argentinian won the three Ardennes classics in a row.
After his run of victories he started the 2005 Giro d'Italia, where he notched two stage wins and finished well in the top five of the general classification. He then took a few weeks rest before taking part in the Deutschland Tour and the Tour de Pologne. In the latter, he finished in a solid fifth place.
With a fourth place in the 2005 Züri-Metzgete, he bagged first place in the season-long UCI ProTour individual rankings to become the 2005 UCI ProTour Champion and its associated white jersey.
He was the first athlete to retire from the 2006 Tour de France when he pulled out due to a urinary infection. Nevertheless, he recovered in time to compete in the 2006 Vuelta a España, winning the fifth stage and holding the leader's jersey
