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Career

Ulissi is a versatile, all-round cyclist who often wins stages and one-day races from breakaways and over hilly terrain.

Amateur career

Growing up in a cycling family (his father raced mountain bikes), Ulissi competed in his first bike race in 1996, at the age of seven. His first win came as a junior in 2004 at the Coppa d'Oro, a victory that he repeated in 2005. Ulissi is the only rider to win that race twice. In 2005, Ulissi also placed first in the junior category at the Italian National Time Trial Championships. Ulissi won the Junior World Road Race Championships in 2006 and 2007. He is the second cyclist ever – after Giuseppe Palumbo – to achieve two consecutive World Junior Road titles. In 2008 and 2009, Ulissi competed on the U23 circuit with the Tuscan teams, Seano Vangi-Molino di Ferro and Hopplà-Seano-Bellissima.

Professional career

Ulissi signed a contract with UCI World Team Lampre-Farnese Vini in 2010. He has stayed with the team for his entire professional career. That same year, he scored his first race victory as a professional, beating Michele Scarponi and Alessandro Proni in a three-rider sprint at the Gran Premio Industria e Commercio di Prato. Ulissi also placed eighth at the Tour of Poland after finishing high up on the fifth stage.

2011-2014

Ulissi recorded his first high-profile professional results during the 2011 season. He took second place to Thomas Voeckler on a rainy, technical final stage of Paris-Nice. Voeckler had attacked a breakaway group, gaining more than a minute. Ulissi tried to bridge the gap, but Voeckler held him to over twenty seconds.

On Stage 17 of his first appearance at the Giro d'Italia, Ulissi and Giovanni Visconti were part of a breakaway that survived to the end of the hilly stage. Visconti shoved Ulissi as they were sprinting for the finish. Though Visconti crossed the line first, race officials relegated him for improper sprinting and awarded Ulissi the stage win.

Ulissi later won the queen stage and overall classification in the 2011 Tour of Slovenia.

Early in the 2012 season, Ulissi won two stages in Coppi e Bartali. On Stage 3, he sprinted to victory ahead of a small group of riders at the end of a mountainous route. And on the following day, Ulissi repeated his win, edging out Danilo di Luca in a sprint between breakaway members. He finished in third place overall after placing ninth in the concluding time trial.

Ulissi (right) climbs the Pampeago Pass at the 2012 Giro d'Italia with Kevin Seeldraeyers (center).

Ulissi again raced the Giro d'Italia, placing fourth in the young rider competition. He also returned to the Tour of Slovenia as defending champion, but his best result was third place on the second stage, where Daryl Impey and Simone Ponzi beat him in a sprint.

In the fall of 2012, he won the Gran Premio Industria e Commercio Artigianato Carnaghese a second ahead of the bunch, with Andrea Palini winning the sprint for second. He came close to winning Milano-Torino before he and Fredrik Kessiakoff were dropped by Alberto Contador in the final kilometer. After these successes, Ulissi expressed a desire to target Il Lombardia, but finished that race five minutes off the pace.

The beginning of the 2013 season saw a series of high results for Ulissi. He placed forth in Trofeo Laigueglia after helping teammate Filippo Pozzato win the race. He also took second to Peter Sagan in Gran Premio Città di Camaiore. In Paris-Nice, Ulissi rode consistently, placing in the top ten on three stages and finishing the race seventh overall. He then raced Coppi e Bartali, where he took the leader's jersey in a solo victory on the second stage. Ulissi defended the race lead in the ensuing stages, including an individual time trial, to claim victory in the race.

Ulissi planned to target the Ardennes classics in April 2013. However, his best result was twentieth in Liége-Bastogne-Liége. He also skipped the Giro in order to target the World Championships, but he abandoned the road race after crashing several times.

Ulissi took his second World Tour-level win during the first stage of the 2013 Tour de Pologne, out-sprinting Darwin Atapuma and Rafal Majka from a breakaway group of 15 riders. He then won three Italian classic races in the fall. In Milano-Torino, Ulissi attacked away from a small group of favorites, including defending champion Alberto Contador, on the final climb to take victory. He won an uphill sprint in Coppa Sabatini a week later. Finally, days after, Ulissi again jumped away from the leading group in the closing meters to win Giro dell'Emilia.

Ulissi won more stage victories in 2014, despite underperforming during the spring classics. He won the second stage of the Tour Down Under, launching an early sprint to beat stage favorite Simon Gerrans. Ulissi won two stages in the Giro d'Italia. On Stage 5, he launched a late attack against a group of stage and GC favorites, and he narrowly beat the Giro's GC contenders to the finish of the race's first major mountain stage.

2015-2020

Ulissi (right) placed third in the 2019 La Flèche Wallonne behind Julian Alaphilippe and Jakob Fuglsang.

After serving a doping-related suspension that ended in March 2015 (see below), Ulissi came back to win Stage 7 of the Giro d'Italia in Fiuggi.

In 2016, Ulissi returned to the Giro d'Italia and won two stages. On Stage 4, Ulissi broke away from the leading group to beat Tom Dumoulin by five seconds. And on Stage 11, he out-sprinted race leader Bob Jungels in the closing meters of the stage. Ulissi won the first individual time trial of his professional career on Stage 2 of the Tour of Slovenia, beating eventual general classification winner Rein Taaramäe over a short and hilly parcours. That August, Ulissi took the third stage and the overall classification at the Czech Cycling Tour.

In June 2017, he was named in the startlist for the Tour de France. He out-sprinted Jesus Herrada and Tom-Jelte Slagter to win the Grand Prix Cycliste de Montréal, his first World Tour-level win in the 2017 season. Ulissi won the general classification in the Presidential Tour of Turkey, his first overall victory in a World Tour stage race. In that race, he took the leader's jersey in a solo hilltop stage victory on Stage 4.

Ulissi won Stage 5 of the 2018 Tour de Suisse, overpowering Enric Mas in a sprint to the line.

In 2019, Ulissi took victory in the Gran Premio di Lugano in Switzerland. He also won Stage 3 and the general classification in the Tour of Slovenia and the test event for the road race at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.