Rafał Majka

Rafał Majka

Majka at the 2012 Japan Cup
Personal information
Full name	Rafał Majka
Born	(1989-09-12) 12 September 1989 Zegartowice, Poland
Height	1.73 m (5 ft 8 in)
Weight	62 kg (137 lb)
Team information
Current team	Tinkoff
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	Climber
Amateur team(s)
2008–2009	Gragnano S.C.
2009	Miche–Silver Cross–Selle Italia (stagiaire)
2010	Petroli Firenze
Professional team(s)
2011–	Saxo Bank–SunGard
Major wins
Grand Tours Tour de France Mountains classification (2014) 3 individual stages (2014, 2015) Stage races Tour de Pologne Overall classification (2014) 2 individual stages (2014)
Infobox last updated on 15 July 2015

Rafał Majka (born 12 September 1989) is a Polish professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam Tinkoff.^[1] He is known as a strong climber, and rose to prominence at the 2013 Giro d'Italia, where he finished 7th overall, and 6th one year later. Other major achievemets are three mountainous stage wins in the Tour de France as well as the Mountains classification in the 2014 edition and two stages and the overall victory at the 2014 Tour de Pologne. He achieved his first Grand Tour podium finish at th 2015 Vuelta a España, where he finished third.

Career

Majka in the Polka Dot Jersey at the 2014 Tour de France

In 2013, he competed in the Giro d'Italia for the first time, where he had a long battle with Carlos Betancur over the lead in the Young riders classification, which eventually fell to the Colombian in the penultimate stage. In the final classification, he ended up 7th, eight minutes behind winner Vincenzo Nibali.

A year later, he improved on his Giro d'Italia result from 2013 by finishing 6th overall.

Majka was a last-minute inclusion in Tinkoff-Saxo's 2014 Tour de France squad, after Roman Kreuziger was temporarily suspended from racing due to irregular biological passport values. On Stage 14, he earned his first professional victory after going solo on the final climb to Risoul.^[2] 4 days later he claimed another victory on Stage 17, soloing to mountaintop finish atop Pla d'Adet.^[3] These successes, as well as some other strong performances in mountain stages, earned Majka the polkadot jersey. Thus he became the first Pole to win a jersey in the Tour de France. A couple of weeks after the Tour de France he won stages 5 & 6 of the 2014 Tour de Pologne which were mountainous as well as the general classification.^[4] Majka is the first Pole who won Tour de Pologne since the race is part of UCI World Tour.

In contrast to the previous two years, Majka did not ride the Giro d'Italia in 2015 where Alberto Contador made the first step in trying to do a Giro-Tour double but started in the Tour de France. He achieved top ten finishes at the Tour of Oman, the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Suisse in preparation for the Tour. Majka won the 11th stage of the Tour de France to Cauterets from a breakaway to take his third Tour stage victory. Majka then prepared to race his season target, the 2015 Vuelta a España, attempting to gain a top 5 or podium finish in the GC. He performed well throughout the entire race, being able to stay at the top of the general classification with Nairo Quintana and Fabio Aru. On the penultimate stage, stage 20, Majka managed to advance himself from fourth place to third place, finishing the Vuelta in third, achieving his goal of being on the podium of a Grand Tour.

Palmarès

Grand Tour general classification results timeline

Grand Tour	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015
Giro	—	—	7	6	—
Tour	—	—	—	44	28
Vuelta	WD	32	19	—	3

WD = Withdrew; In Progress = IP

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Rafał Majka.

• Rafal Majka profile at Saxo Bank-SunGard
• Rafał Majka profile at Cycling Archives
• Rafal Majka cycling stats at Pro Cycling Stats