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MADRID: Spain’s Alberto Contador, the 24-year-old
surprise winner of the doping-scarred Tour de France, received a
hero’s welcome Monday when he returned to his native Madrid.
Hundreds of ecstatic supporters
attended a welcome-home party held outside Madrid city hall under
bright sunshine.
“He is the first Madrileno to
win cycling’s most important race,” Madrid mayor Esperanza
Aguirre said as she handed a smiling Contador a commemorative
plaque.
“The support of Madrilenos, of
the Spanish people, is unanimous,” she added.
Riding for the Discovery Channel
team, Contador was the first Spaniard to stand on the winner’s
podium of the Tour since the last of Miguel Indurain’s five titles
in 1995 and the ninth to win cycling’s biggest event since 1959.
“I must thank the French
people. They supported me every day. I felt very loved in France,”
he told AFP.
Many of Contador’s friends and
neighbors from the town of Pinto, located just outside of Madrid,
where he now lives were among the crowd of well wishers.
“He is a normal youth, very
hardworking, he deserves it,” said the mayor of Pinto, Miriam
Rabaneda Gudiel. The town will hold its own celebration for Contador
on Monday night.
The 94th Tour de France was hit
by four doping scandals over its three weeks, including one, which
led to the forcible exit of Danish race leader Michael Rasmussen,
leaving Contador in front with four days left to race.
But supporters in Madrid rejected
any suggestion that Contador’s victory had been overshadowed by
the doping scandals.
“Contador won properly. He is a
phenomenon, the people are with him,” said Felix Perea, a
neighbour of Contador’s family in Pinto who was part of the crowd
which earlier Monday welcomed the cyclist home at Madrid airport.
Spanish media praised
Contador’s victory, with many newspapers writing that the rider
represents the hope of a “new cycling.”
“Champion of hope” wrote
sports daily AS on its front page below a photo of the cyclist
wearing a red and yellow Spanish flag around his neck taken after he
won the race on Sunday.
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