When he was younger, Cancellara won many time trials in the junior category. In 1998 and 1999 he was TT junior world champion and in 1999 he won the Junior Cycling World Cup. Today he is considered one of the best time trial racers and a specialist for one-day classic events. Very mountainous courses are not one of his strengths. However, he showed in the Tour de France 2008 that he is still developing his mountain racing potential.

His racing victories:
In 2004 Cancellara participated in his first Tour de France, winning the Prolog and wearing the yellow jersey as he successfully defended in the first stage of the race.
At the World Championship 2005 at Madrid he won the bronze medal in the time trial.
In 2006 Cancellara switched to the CSC team, winning individual time trials twice. His biggest victory of the year was also in ITT – as World Champion 2006.
In 2007 Fabian Cancellara won the Prolog of the Tour de France, held that year in London. Wearing the yellow jersey, he managed to defend his leadership position on the following days of the race. In the third stage of Waregem to Compiègne he outmanoeuvred the sprinters with an attack 900 meters from the finish line to win that stage. He had to give up the yellow jersey in the seventh stage.
Fabian Cancellara quickly put that loss behind him and won the ITT World Championship 2007 in Stuttgart, repeating his victory of the previous year.

The next year began for Cancellara with extraordinary success. Winning two stages of the Tour de Suisse and his sixth Swiss ITT champion title, Cancellara showed that he was prepared for his next goals: the Tour de France and the Olympic Games. At the summer Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, Cancellara was third in road racing and four days later became Olympic gold medal winner in the time trial.
Cancellara received the title Swiss Athlete of the Year 2008.

Cancellara celebrated many more victories in 2009, despite the fact that his training was disrupted by illness. He won the Prolog of the Tour of California. In June, he won the Tour de Suisse 2009. And after he had already been Swiss Champion in ITT six times, in 2009 he won the Swiss Championship in road racing.

At the Tour de France 2009 he won the Prolog in Monaco, which that year was designed not as a short Prolog, but rather as an individual time trial. Thus, as in 2007, he was the first to wear the maillot jaune. Together with his victories from previous years (2004 and 2007), he displaced Ferdi Kübler as Swiss racer to wear the maillot jaune during his career more times than any other cyclist – namely 15 times.

More victories