Twenty years ago this August a young Spaniard named Alberto Contador scored the first ever win of his career in a time trial of the Tour de Pologne. It was his first year as a pro, and on a 19-kilometre course between Jelenia Gora and Karpacz, Contador - who would go on to conquer the Tour de France and Giro d’Italia twice and the Vuelta a España three times - was a full 19 seconds faster than his closest pursuer, the seasoned Polish pro and overall winner Cezary Zamana.
A quick glance back through the history of the Tour de Pologne shows that it has a lengthy tradition of bringing forward young champions such as Contador into the limelight. In recent years, top riders who have won Pologne outright as one of their early stepping stones for their career range from Dan Martin in 2010 and Peter Sagan in 2011 to Dylan Teuns in 2017, Pavel Sivakov in 2019, Remco Evenepoel in 2020 and Joao Almeida in 2021.
