In June 2011, he recorded his first major professional victories. He won Stage 17 in his first appearance at the Giro d'Italia after Giovanni Visconti was relegated for improper sprinting. Ulissi and Visconti were part of a breakaway that survived to the end of the hilly stage, and Visconti shoved Ulissi during their sprint to the finish line.[5] Ulissi later won the queen stage and the overall classification in that year's Tour of Slovenia.[6][7][8]
Ulissi took his second World Tour-level win during the first stage of the 2013 Tour de Pologne, out-sprinting Darwin Atapuma and Rafał Majka from a breakaway group of 15 riders.[10] He then won three Italian classic races in the fall. In Milano–Torino, Ulissi attacked away from a small group of favourites, including defending champion Alberto Contador, on the final climb to take victory.[11] He won an uphill sprint in Coppa Sabatini a week later.[12] Finally, days after, Ulissi again jumped away from the leading group in the closing metres of the Giro dell'Emilia to take victory.[13]
Ulissi took 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 favourite 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 general classification favourites,[14] and he narrowly beat the Giro's overall contenders to the finish of the race's first major mountain stage.[15]
After serving a doping-related suspension that ended in March 2015, Ulissi came back to win Stage 7 of the Giro d'Italia in Fiuggi.[16] 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.[17] On Stage 11, he out-sprinted race leader Bob Jungels in the closing metres of the stage.[18] 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.[19] That August, Ulissi took the third stage and the overall classification at the Czech Cycling Tour.[20]
In June 2014 it was announced that Ulissi had failed a drug test on Stage 11 of that year's Giro d'Italia. He tested positive for the asthma drug salbutamol, which is found in Ventolin. Ulissi had received permission to use Ventolin to treat a bronchospasm. However, the test indicated that he had almost twice the permitted concentration of salbutamol in his urine.[27] He had also received paracetamol from a race doctor after he was involved in a crash during the stage.[28]
Both Ulissi and the Lampre–Merida team doctor denied using his inhaler to gain a competitive advantage, claiming that Ulissi had taken only two puffs before the start of the stage.[28] Lampre–Merida and the head coach of Italy's national team, Davide Cassani, expressed support for Ulissi. Nevertheless, he was provisionally suspended from Lampre–Merida and did not attend the Italian national team's training camp after the positive test was announced.[29]
Ulissi appealed to the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) for a controlled excretion study, as he could face a two-year suspension from racing. After some delay, the UCI passed Ulissi's case to Swiss Cycling (Ulissi resides outside of Lugano) to conduct a disciplinary hearing. Ulissi argued that his crash during the Giro's Stage 11 could have caused higher-than-expected levels of salbutamol.[30] After briefly suspending Ulissi when news of his positive test broke, Lampre–Merida announced that Ulissi could return to race in time for a string of Italian one-day races, including Tre Valli Varesine and Coppa Ugo Agostoni. But when Ulissi's case was passed to Swiss Cycling, the team backtracked, citing "internal sanitary rules of the team and the rules of the Mouvement pour un cyclisme crédible (MPCC)."[30] The Swiss Olympic Association agreed with Ulissi's defence, that he used salbutamol negligently and not in order to cheat. He therefore received a reduced nine-month suspension, ending in March 2015.[31][32]
The suspension created a potential conflict between Lampre–Merida and Ulissi over the rider's contract. The team was a member of the Mouvement pour un cyclisme crédible (MPCC), a voluntary association of teams working to promote clean cycling. MPCC rules prohibited a member team from signing a rider within two years of that rider serving a doping-related suspension of longer than six months. The rules could have prevented Lampre–Merida from allowing Ulissi to return to racing after his suspension; however, because Ulissi already had a contract with the team, he could sue if Lampre–Merida ended his contract early.[33] The MPCC at first allowed Lampre–Merida to keep its contract with Ulissi to avoid legal difficulties, and Ulissi returned to racing for the Tour of the Basque Country.[34] However, the MPCC and Lampre–Merida continued sparring over Ulissi's participation in races, prompting the team to withdraw from the MPCC in March 2015.[35]
Personal life
Ulissi was born in Cecina in 1989. He was named Diego Armando after Diego Maradona, his father's favourite football player. Ulissi's mother, Donatella, works at a winery, while his father was a mountain bike racer. His father encouraged his passion for cycling, and Ulissi entered his first race in 1996.[36]
Ulissi lives outside of Lugano, Switzerland with his wife, Arianna, and daughters, Lia and Anna. He missed Anna's birth in March 2020 while in quarantine at the UAE Tour after four riders on UAE Team Emirates tested positive for COVID-19.[37]
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