Thomas Dekker (cyclist)

Thomas Dekker
	Thomas Dekker (2006)
To person
Date of birth	September 6, 1984
nation	Netherlands
discipline	Street
End of career	2014
doping
July 2009 to June 2011	DynEpo
	Last updated: December 27, 2016

Thomas Dekker (born September 6, 1984 in Dirkshorn ) is a former Dutch cyclist .

Dekker was considered one of the greatest talents in Dutch cycling. Until he was banned from doping in July 2009, he was considered the greatest hope of the next Dutch Tour de France victory after Jan Janssen in 1968 and Joop Zoetemelk in 1980 .

Beginning of professional career

In 2005, Dekker received a contract with Rabobank , after having previously driven for two years for its junior team . In 2004 he won silver at the world championships in road racing and in the time trial of the U23 class. In 2003 he was third in the U23 road race.

In 2005 Dekker won the mountain stage at the Critérium International and came second in the overall classification. In the ProTour races Eneco Tour and Tour of Poland he finished fourth and third in the overall standings and won the eighth stage of the latter tour, a 19-kilometer mountain time trial. On his first big tour, the Giro d'Italia 2005 , he reached 75th place overall.

His greatest success to date was in March 2006, when he won the one-week Italian Pro Tour round trip Tirreno-Adriatico . In this he took the lead in the overall standings on the fifth stage and was able to defend it until the end. The following year, at the beginning of May, he won the overall classification of the Tour de Romandie after winning the individual time trial . On the sixth stage of the Tour de Suisse , he proved his climbing skills and won the mountain finish.

In August 2008 the contractual relationship (until 2009) with his employer Rabobank was terminated prematurely. Previously there had been rumors that Dekker was dissatisfied with the team management - he was not nominated for the Tour de France 2008 - and only communicated with them through his lawyers. He also withdrew from the selection for the Olympic Games in Beijing back, because he was not in good shape. From the beginning of the 2009 season he drove in the Silence-Lotto team .

Doping and comeback

During urine follow-up checks from 2007, Thomas Dekker was convicted on June 30, 2009 after long suspicions of doping with erythropoietin (EPO). He was immediately removed from the Tour de France squad of the Silence Lotto team and suspended. In spring 2009, the news magazine Focus had named Dekker as a suspected customer of the doping dealer Stefan Matschiner .

At the beginning of March 2010 it was announced that Thomas Dekker had been banned until July 1, 2011. After his suspension expired, Dekker was hired by the Chipotle Development Team , a farm team from Team Garmin-Cervélo .

When he switched to Garmin-Sharp in 2012, he was again part of a team in the highest category, UCI ProTeam . However, he was unable to achieve any notable victories in well-known races there. For the 2015 season, his team merged with the Cannondale and his contract was not renewed by the newly formed team.

In February 2015, Thomas Dekker tried to improve the world hour record set a few weeks earlier by the Australian Rohan Dennis in Aguascalientes , but missed a new record of 270 meters. After his attempt to get a contract with a team by setting a new hourly world record failed, Dekker announced his retirement from active cycling around four weeks later.

In his statement on his resignation in March 2015, Dekker wrote: “As a young professional, I only want one thing: to win races. And preferably as many as possible. I wanted to win at all costs. That was my forte, and at the same time, it trapped me. It made me sink very deep. "

Personal and professional

In 2016, Thomas Dekker first made private headlines in the tabloids. It was revealed that he is the significant other of Nathalie Marciano, the divorced wife of Maurice Marciano, one of the founders of the Guess fashion company . According to one of the newspapers , he “fell into the trap” and is now leading a jet set life in Los Angeles .

Dekker's autobiography Mijn Gevecht was published in November 2016 . In the book, he accuses the former sports director of the Bianchi team , Jacques Hanegraaf , of having referred him to the Spanish doping doctor Eufemiano Fuentes . The co-author, the former professional cyclist and journalist Thijs Zonneveld , reported on legal action and threats of violence against Dekker. The book was published in June 2017 under the title Thomas Dekker: Unter Profis auf Deutsch by Covadonga Verlag .