Rolf Sørensen


Rolf Sørensen is a former Danish professional road bicycle racer. He is the most successful Danish bicycle racer ever, with 53 victories over 17 seasons. He is currently working as a cycling commentator and agent. Born in Helsinge in Denmark, Sørensen moved to Italy at the age of 17, where he has lived since. He was a client of Francesco Conconi and Luigi Cecchini. He goes under the name Il Biondo due to his blonde hair. He is married to Susanne.

Accomplishments

Sørensen won such classic one-day races as the Tour of Flanders, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, Paris–Brussels, Paris–Tours and Milano–Torino, as well as slightly smaller races like the Coppa Bernocchi, and the Rund um den Henninger Turm or Grand Prix Frankfurt. He has led the UCI Road World Cup on several occasions, finishing third in 1989 and 1991 and second in 1997 after a broken foot kept him from scoring points in the last two World Cup races of the season.
Sørensen also won individual stages in the 1994 and 1996 Tour de France, and wore the yellow jersey as the leader of the race after the team time trial in 1991, won by his Italian team Ariostea. He kept it until he broke his collar bone in a fall four days later.
Rolf Sørensen participated in the Tour seven times, the last in 2001. He has also won a number of stages in other stage races, among them stage 9 of the 1995 Giro d'Italia, three stages in the Tour of the Basque Country, six stages in Tirreno–Adriatico, two in the Tour de Suisse, and two in the Tour de Romandie.
Sørensen also claimed the silver medal at the 1996 Olympics.

Doping

For many years Sørensen denied that he used performance-enhancing drugs, but more than a decade after the end of his career as a professional cyclist he admitted using EPO, and to some extent, Cortisone. He broke the news to Danish TV2 on March 18, 2013.

Major results

;1986
;1987
;1988
;1989
;1990
;1991
;1992
;1993
;1994
;1995
;1996
;1997
;1998
;1999
;2000
;2001
;2002

Monuments results timeline

—Did not compete
DNFDid not finish