Rui Costa calls it a career
Former world champion Rui Costa, who has spent the past two seasons with EF Education-EasyPost, announced on Friday that he is retiring after nearly two decades in the pro peloton.
"I was blessed to live my dream, to win, to fall and get back up, and to always have my guardian angel with me on every bend of the road," Costa wrote on Instagram.
The Portuguese veteran, who turned 39 earlier this month, took his biggest results in the early 2010s with Movistar and then the Lampre-Merida squad that eventually became UAE-Team Emirates XRG. Costa won three straight Tours de Suisse between 2012 and 2014 and nabbed four Grand Tour stage wins over the course of his career. He took his most famous victory, the world road title, in 2013 in Firenze, where he stunned Spanish teammates Joaquim Rodríguez and Alejandro Valverde to secure the rainbow jersey.
