Thomas Dekker was a guest on the Clubhuis Team Lucas podcast on Friday. There, they spoke about the doping story of the now 39-year-old Dutchman, who won the Tirreno-Adriatico in 2006 and how doping completely changed his life as a rider.
How did a 'blood transaction' work? "Three to four weeks before I rode the Tirreno, I gave a bag of blood for the first time. Your body will then produce new blood cells and then four to five days before the start I flew to Madrid and got that bag of blood back. It is of course all quite exciting when you board the plane with a cap on, with your collar up, a secret SIM card and a switched off phone. For the rest, I only had cash to pay and I had to make do with a Spaniard who couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Spanish."
"Afterwards I won that Tirreno, after having to ride very carefully all week, which takes quite a lot of energy. It was cold all week and I had Oscar Freire, Juan Antonio Flecha and Michael Boogerd as teammates. All excellent riders and I remember sitting there on the edge of my bed as a 21-year-old rider and wondering whether this would be the case for the next ten to fifteen years. Then tears flowed down my cheeks."
"It is very tight-lipped, dangerous and in some countries even prohibited by law, and we are not even talking about your health. The fact that you take blood out of your body, write a number on it and then eventually get that blood back and if it's wrong, it might mean the end of your life. You don't think about that at that moment."
Place comments
0 Comments
You are currently seeing only the comments you are notified about, if you want to see all comments from this post, click the button below.
Show all comments