TdF Files: Au revoir, Vino

With no fanfare and during an innocuous stage of the Tour de France, at least as far as the general classification protagonists was concerned, Alexander Vinokourov unofficially retired from professional cycling Sunday. Anthony Tan takes time to reflect on his rollercoaster career on two wheels.

Born on 16 September 1973 in Petropavl, Kazakhstan, Alexander Nikolaevich Vinokourov is just six months younger than me, which means as an aspiring amateur, I kept track of his upward trajectory as mine regressed from barely-a-chance-in-hell to no-chance-in-hell.

The sports school a then 13-year-old Vino attended in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, was modelled on those in the Soviet Union. It meant, therefore, that not only was Vino born tough, he was bred tough.

Towards the close of the 1997 season, a successful trial with Casino, the team of Vincent Lavenu – now team manager at ProTeam AG2R La Mondiale, which is of course riding this year's Tour de France – led to a two-year contract, starting the following year.

Straight away, Vinokourov showed promise, winning six races in his neo-pro year.

A season later, in 1999 and aged just 25, he won the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, and was touted as a future Tour winner.

A handful of years later and riding for Team Telekom, he went on to win Paris-Nice twice (2002-03), the last of those in honour of his fallen compatriot, Andrei Kivilev, who died after a fall on the second stage, the 2003 Tour de Suisse and the Amstel Gold Race, also in the same year.

His breakthrough year continued at his first Grande Boucle, where he finished third overall to Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich, and was awarded the race's most combative rider.

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Injury, conflicting personalities within the team and poor tactics saw Vinokourov never reach the heights many predicted after his '99 Dauphin̩ triumph. However he continued to win Рmostly through a heady combination of brute strength, stubbornness and trademark panache than anything else.

Then there was the first irony of Liberty Seguros, his 2006 team's co-title sponsor, exiting the sport after its team manager, Manolo Saiz, was arrested based on circumstantial evidence of systematic blood doping.

But that didn't help because little more than a month later, Astana-Würth withdrew from the Tour after five riders were implicated in the Operación Puerto doping scandal, leaving the team unable to compete (a minimum six riders are required).

Interestingly, Vinokourov wasn't one of the accused. Instead, he won the Vuelta a España – but not before Würth became the second title sponsor to depart in the space of one season, as the team became known only as Astana, as it does today.

The second irony was that Vinokourov was eventually done for homologous blood doping on 24 July 2007, following his time-trial victory on Stage 13 of that year's Tour. ASO president, Patrice Clerc, asked Astana to withdraw, which they did, and in December, he announced his retirement.

When the UCI got wind of a possible return from Vino, they renewed an appeal previously made to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, asking that the Kazakhstani's one-year ban, handed to him by his national cycling federation, be overturned.

CAS acceded to the request and so Vino's ban would last till 24 July 2009.

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Exactly one month after the expiration of his ban, Vinokourov joined his old team at Astana, who welcomed back the then 35-year-old with open arms. After Armstrong and 10 of his mates left Astana, leaving Contador as the sole leader, his re-hiring was seen as a return to the team's roots.

Opinion towards his comeback, however, was divided.

Public sentiment was perhaps best exemplified at the 2010 Li̬ge-Bastogne-Li̬ge, where he was booed on the podium by a horde of Belgian fans, unhappy to see him back to his best. He pleaded to the press for repentance, seeking atonement. Not long afterwards, the public Рalong with his fellow riders Рbegan to warm to him once more.

At Liège, and again rather ironically, he beat Russia's Alexandr Kolobnev – who became the 2011 Tour's first doping positive after a test taken on Stage 5, his A-sample revealing traces of a diuretic that can be used as a masking agent – and Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, currently serving a two-year suspension till 1 January 2012, for his involvement in Operación Puerto.

Since his return, Vinokourov has never looked like a serious challenger for GC in a Grand Tour, even if he did finish third to Cadel Evans at this year's Tour de Romandie. But his panache, hard-headedness and fighting spirit were all still there – qualities that made him so watchable, even if you despised him.

So when he crashed out on the descent of the Puy Mary on the rain-soaked ninth stage to Saint-Flour, fracturing his pelvis and elbow, I was saddened, for his presence is a welcome addition in an era that is too often characterised by conservativeness.

What will Vino do next?

Well, with the UCI rules now in place that prevents any rider suspended for two years or more having a role in team management, we can rule out a job as a sports director or manager.

He may decide, however, to take on a coaching role within Astana, most likely in an unofficial capacity. Or a development role, helping to find and groom Kazahkstan cycling's next big things.

Or, he may decide to leave the sport altogether, as quietly as he left today.

When I sent out a Tweet this afternoon, asking you for your feelings towards Vino's retirement, SBS' producer at the Tour, Stuart Randall, best summed it up.

"Sad. Sad for who he used to be, what he became and how he left."

Follow Anthony on Twitter: @anthony_tan