In 2008, he won gold in the individual time trial and silver in the men's road race at the Summer Olympics. In 2016, he won Olympic gold in the individual time trial for the second time in his career. In addition, Cancellara has been the time trial world champion four times in his career. Fabian Cancellara was born on 18 March 1981, in Wohlen bei Bern, Switzerland, to Italian parents. He discovered cycling at the age of 13 after falling in love with an old family bike that he had found in the garage and immediately gave up football to concentrate on cycling. In addition, Cancellara excelled at cross-country skiing during his youth. Cancellara's cycling skills began to blossom at an early age, when he impressed as a time trialist and dominated Swiss junior cycling. Yvan Girard, Swiss national junior team coach from 1997 to 2005, was quoted saying that Cancellara was "head and shoulders above everyone else" in the time trials. He won the junior World Time Trial Championship in both 1998 and 1999 and at the age of 19 he came in second at the 2000 U-23 World Time Trial Championship. After his second-place finish at the Under-23 time trial championship, Cancellara turned professional with , which was one of the strongest teams in the world at the time. Cancellara rode as a stagiaire for the team in late 2000 before joining the team for the 2001 season as a member of the "Young Riders Project". Cancellara's first victory as a professional came at the prologue of the Tour of Rhodes, where he also won the overall final general classification. For 2002 the Mapei team split into two formations per UCI regulations, the "Top Team" with 25 riders and the GS-III "Gruppo Giovani" (youth group) to develop young talents, which Cancellara joined with other riders including Filippo Pozzato, Michael Rogers and Bernhard Eisel. Giorgio Squinzi, the head of Mapei firm, later said in an interview with "La Gazzetta dello Sport" that he took Cancellara and Pozzato all the way from the Junior category to Mapei's top team, in order to let them avoid the Under-23 category where he suggested that doping was even worse than among professionals. Squinzi also said that Cancellara was going to be "The future Miguel Indurain". During his two seasons with Mapei, Cancellara used his time trialling skills to great effect, winning several individual time trials and a total of eleven victories.