Having been U23 world road race champion and also won world and European titles against the watch and on the track, the promise of the young Ukrainian rider was never fulfilled, with Dmytro Grabovskyy now having died aged just 31 years.
A former U23 world road race champion and a European champion in the TT discipline, Dmytro Grabovskyy has died aged just 31 years.
Early reports suggest the Ukrainian suffered a fatal heart attack. He had battled with alcoholism and had never fulfilled his early promise.
In 2011 he was scheduled to return to racing at the Rás after a troubled period, which included a number of accidents.
But he suffered a further accident and never travelled to Ireland. He was set to ride the Rás that year with Continental team ISD-Lampre.
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He had won the world title in the U23 road race in Madrid in 2005 but his early success came on the track when he was part of junior and U23 team pursuit line-ups that won European titles.
He was also a junior and U23 European champion in the scratch race.
The year after he won the U23 world title in Madrid he rode as a stagiaire for QuickStep and had finised 2nd overall and won a stage in the Baby Giro earlier that year.
He turned full-time pro for QuickStep in 2007 but struggled with life at the highest level.
He would later speak publicly about struggling with alcoholism to the extent he believed he had almost died from excess drinking twice.
He rode the Giro for ISD-Neri in 2009 and was fifth on two stages and the following year took the climbers’ classification in Tirreno-Adriatico. However, a bad accident shortly afterwards would all but end his 2010 season.
He later rode for ISD-Lampre, the Continental team with whom he was set to ride the Rás in 2011, but his stint there never took off and he left pro cycling at the end of that year.
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