Winning Olympic road race gold was the perfect way for Fabian Cancellara to call time on his illustrious career.

Cancellara retired from professional cycling following the end of the 2016 WorldTour season, bringing the curtain down on a career that has seen him claim four world titles and two Olympic golds - the first coming at Beijing 2008.

The Swiss rider's record is awash with success on the road with wins at Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders.

Since making his Tour de France debut in 2001 the man they call 'Spartacus' has also worn the leader's yellow jersey on 29 occasions, but he never challenged for the general classification title.

Ahead of the 2016 season the 35-year-old announced his plans to retire and says winning gold at Rio 2016 was the icing on the cake of a remarkable 12 months.

"It was quite a special year, it was the retirement year and a year with big sporting events with unique moments where you can reach history," Cancellara told Omnisport.

"I had up and downs, it was full of many beautiful things that has given me some different life experiences.

"What I repeated [in Rio] and the way everything came out, it stands out so much more than Beijing or other races I have won.

"If I look on the performance side, the preparation side, the mental strength, Rio just stands out on so many different ways, still now after a few months I'm looking back and am so grateful and thankful for that."

Rio gold is one of Cancellara's career highlights, an achievement he ranks alongside his Tour of Flanders win in 2013 - when he bounced back from an injury-plagued season the year before.

"Besides Rio, of course, the 2013 Tour of Flanders stands out for me," he added.

"After the crash I had at the beginning of the [2012] classics, the crash I had at London Olympics, it was a bad bad year, so coming back a year later in 13 and winning Flanders in the way I won was quite emotional.

"It is really something special. My problem is that I have all these seven Classics, they are standing out somehow everyone individually.

"[It is] really difficult because every race has its way that I won it and that's why they are so amazing."

Now, after his Trek-Segafredo contract came to an end, Cancellara hopes to enjoy new experiences away from the peloton, but he still plans to have some involvement in cycling.

"It's a big change, life challenging, I have to start to build normal days, life and time management, creating new platform for myself that I can live daily," he added.

"You have to restart your daily schedule to go on to new projects.

"I will be having some with Trek, like ambassador stuff, there are also places to go to learn and see other details of business cases.

"I have heaps of possibilities to find some new motivations and ambitions, and giving cycling something back. I am looking forward to that."