Michele Scarponi (25 September 1979 – 22 April 2017) was an Italian road bicycle racer, who rode professionally from 2002 until his death in 2017 for the Acqua e Sapone–Cantina Tollo, Domina Vacanze–Elitron, Würth, Acqua & Sapone–Caffè Mokambo, Androni Giocattoli, Lampre–Merida and Astana teams. During his career, Scarponi took 21 professional victories.

Scarponi started cycling at the age of eight with a local team in the Marche region, spending almost a decade with them which culminated in him becoming the winner of the Italian National Road Race Championships for juniors in 1997. He then spent four years at the amateur level with Zalf–Euromobil–Fior (1998–2000) and Site–Frezza (2001) before turning professional in 2002 with Acqua e Sapone–Cantina Tollo. For the next decade, Scarponi rode mainly for Italian teams except for his two-year spell with Spanish team Liberty Seguros–Würth in 2005 and 2006, where he was used as a domestique during Roberto Heras' 2005 Vuelta a España success.

Having returned to the peloton after a doping ban, Scarponi took his first major victories in 2009 with Diquigiovanni–Androni: he won a stage and the general classification at Tirreno–Adriatico and took two stage victories – both from breakaways – at the Giro d'Italia, where he had been deployed as a domestique for Gilberto Simoni's overall challenge. He led the Androni Giocattoli team at a Grand Tour for the first time at the 2010 Giro d'Italia, where he finished in fourth overall and won a stage for the second successive year.

He then spent three years with the Lampre–ISD team between 2011 and 2013; in his first season, he won the Giro del Trentino and initially finished in second place to Alberto Contador at both the Volta a Catalunya and the Giro d'Italia. Contador was later stripped of those results in February 2012, after a positive test for clenbuterol at the 2010 Tour de France – as a consqeuence, Scarponi was promoted to both victories, and he also assumed the victory in the points classification of the Giro d'Italia. He took two further fourth-place overall finishes at the Giro d'Italia in 2012 (losing a podium finish during the final stage individual time trial) and 2013, but no further stage wins. Scarponi joined the Astana team in 2014, initially serving as a team leader for that year's Giro d'Italia, before often serving in a domestique role for the remainder of his career, in support of his compatriots Vincenzo Nibali and Fabio Aru. In his final professional race, the 2017 Tour of the Alps, Scarponi took his first individual victory for three-and-a-half years.

During his professional career, Scarponi also served two suspensions in relation to doping. In 2006, Scarponi was implicated in the Operación Puerto doping case that was progressed by the Guardia Civil in relation to Eufemiano Fuentes, who was Scarponi's team doctor when he was riding for Liberty Seguros–Würth in 2005 and 2006. He admitted to his involvement in May 2007, following meetings with the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) and was suspended from racing until August 2008. Towards the end of 2012, Scarponi served a further three-month ban after his admission to performing medical tests with Michele Ferrari, an Italian doctor whose name has been linked to numerous cases of doping in cycling – and who had been given a lifetime ban from the sport earlier in the year by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA).