Federico Bahamontes

Spanish cyclist and the first rider to win the King of the Mountains title in all three Grand Tours, who became the first Spaniard to win the Tour de France in 1959.

Born on 9 July 1928 in Santo Domingo-Caudilla, Toledo, Federico Bahamontes developed his climbing legs as a teenager pushing a 120-kilogram fruit cart through the streets of Toledo. He turned professional in 1954 and quickly established himself as the finest pure climber of his generation. Bahamontes became the first cyclist to complete the 'career triple' of winning the mountains classification at all three Grand Tours — the Vuelta a España (1957, 1958), the Giro d'Italia (1956) and the Tour de France, which he won an unprecedented six times (1954, 1958, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1964). His crowning achievement came at the 1959 Tour de France, where he became the first Spanish rider to win the general classification, benefiting from an early Pyrenean escape and a mountain time trial victory at Puy-de-Dôme before extending his lead through the Alps alongside fellow climber Charly Gaul. A sometimes reluctant descender, Bahamontes was famously said to have waited for the peloton atop a climb during the 1954 Tour while eating an ice cream, a moment emblematic of his singular focus on climbing rather than overall tactics. He won 11 individual Grand Tour mountain stages across his career. Bahamontes retired in 1965 to run a bicycle and motorcycle shop in Toledo. He was named the greatest climber in Tour de France history by L'Équipe magazine in 2013, and died on 8 August 2023 at age 95, having been the oldest living Tour de France winner.

Explosive climbing specialist with a singular focus on mountain stages over overall tactics

Widely regarded as one of the greatest pure climbers in the history of the Tour de France