{"id":557797,"date":"2026-03-22T21:54:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:54:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557797\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T21:54:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T21:54:18","slug":"legendary-colombian-cyclist-nairo-quintana-to-retire-after-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/557797\/","title":{"rendered":"Legendary Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana to retire after 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-testid=\"wcl-news-perex\" itemprop=\"description\">Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana announced on Sunday he will retire at the end of the 2026 season, bringing a glittering 17\u2011year career to a close.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/quintana-nairo\/KM7pI5sk\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Quintana<\/a>, who turned 36 in February, is an icon in Colombia as much for his easygoing manner as for winning the Giro d&#8217;Italia in 2014 and the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>He came second in the Tour de France behind <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/player\/froome-chris\/dWtORk1O\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chris Froome<\/a> in 2013 and 2015, and third in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is my last season as a professional cyclist, and every race will be a last dance,&#8221; said the Colombian.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking ahead of next week&#8217;s Tour of Catalonia, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flashscore.com\/team\/movistar-team\/K4hJgxdc\/\" data-analytics-element=\"ARTICLE_TEXT_LINK\" data-analytics-alias=\"internal\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Movistar<\/a> rider said his one-year extension with the Spanish team would be his last year.<\/p>\n<p>He raced 20 Grand Tours but was generally in the shadow of the cycling superpower Team Sky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Colombian cyclist Nairo Quintana announced on Sunday he will retire at the end of the 2026 season, bringing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-557797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}