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Alberto Contador Velasco (Spanish pronunciation: [alˈβeɾto kontaˈðoɾ beˈlasko]; born 6 December 1982) is a Spanish professional road bicycle racer for UCI ProTeam Astana. He was the winner of the 2007 Tour de France with the Discovery Channel team. With the Astana team he has won the 2008 Giro d'Italia, the 2008 Vuelta a España, the 2009 Tour de France, and the 2010 Tour de France. He is the fifth racer in history, and the first Spaniard, to win all three Grand Tours of road cycling.

Contador has been referred to as the best climbing specialist and stage racer in the world. Notable summit stage finishes on which he has victories include the Alto de El Angliru in the Vuelta and the Plateau de Beille in the Tour. After being widely expected to lose his tenuous lead in the 2007 Tour de France in that race's final individual time trial, Contador has become a more accomplished time trialist, with several victories in the discipline. He has earned a reputation as an all-rounder, a cyclist who excels in all aspects of stage racing which are needed for high places in the general classification.

Contador's career has been marked by occasional doping allegations, the foremost of which, the Operación Puerto doping case, led his Astana-Würth team (a team unrelated in composition to the one for which he currently rides, despite the same sponsor) to withdraw en masse from the 2006 Tour de France before it began. He was eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, but was also accused of doping after his victory in the race the following year. Contador has continually maintained his innocence, and has never faced any individual sanctions for doping.

Contador was born in Pinto in the Community of Madrid, the third of four children. He has an older brother and sister and a younger brother, who has cerebral palsy. Having previously practiced other sports, such as football and athletics, Contador discovered cycling at the age of 14 thanks to his elder brother Francisco Javier.

At the age of 15, Alberto began to compete in races at the amateur level in Spain, joining the Real Velo Club Portillo from Madrid. Although he got no victories that year or the next, he demonstrated great qualities and was soon nicknamed Pantani (after Marco Pantani, regarded as one of the best climbers of all time) for his climbing skills. In 2000, he experienced his first victories, winning several mountains classification prizes from prominent events on the Spanish amateur cycling calendar.

He dropped out of school at the age of 16 without having finished his Bachillerato and signed with Iberdrola-Loinaz, a youth team run by Manolo Saiz, manager of the professional ONCE cycling team. In 2001, he won the under-23 Spanish time trial championship.

Contador lives with his long-time girlfriend Macarena in the city of Madrid when not competing, and enjoys hunting in his spare time. He has a fascination for birds, keeping personally-bred canaries and goldfinches at home.

Contador turned professional in 2003 for ONCE-Eroski. In his first year as a professional he won the eighth stage of the Tour de Pologne, an individual time trial. During the first stage of the 2004 Vuelta a Asturias he started to feel unwell, and after 40 kilometers he fell and went into convulsions. He had been suffering from headaches for several days beforehand and was diagnosed with a cerebral cavernoma, a congenital vascular disorder, for which he underwent risky surgery and a recovery to get back on his bike. As a result of the surgery, he has a scar that runs from one ear to the other over the top of his head. Contador started to train again at the end of 2004 and eight months after the surgery he won the fifth stage of the 2005 Tour Down Under racing for Liberty Seguros, as the team previously known as ONCE had become. He went on to win the third stage and the overall classification of the Setmana Catalana, thus winning his first stage race as a professional. He also won an individual time trial during the Vuelta al País Vasco, where he finished third, and the fourth stage of the Tour de Romandie, where he finished fourth overall.