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not yet, just out in Dutch. going to get it today.
there was part of a chapter in Zonneveld's (writer of the book, journo, ex pro) newspaper, maybe readable if you put it through Google translate
http://www.ad.nl/sport/over-de-tour-van-2007-wordt-nooit-gepraat~afc4bb74/
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OK I gave it a go, here’s a crude translation of the article:
No one speaks of the Tour of 2007
BOOK THOMAS DEKKER AD-reporter Thijs Zonneveld writes in 'Thomas Dekker, mijn gevecht' the story of the great cycling talent that got tangled up in his own will to be the best. This preview is a part of the chapter about the 2007 Tour de France, ‘Rasmussen’s Tour’.
14-11-16
My first Tour is Michael Boogerd’s last Tour. In retrospect it turns out to be my last Tour as well although I don’t know that yet. We are roomies. Ten years after watching Michael race on a camping TV, I’m in the bed next to the idol of my youth for three weeks. We talk all day. Michael tells me that he’s been using blood bags at Stefan Matschiner’s outfit, an athlete manager in Austria. He simply bought all of Humanplasma’s goods and supplies and did a crash course in blood transfusion. Michael Rasmussen is also a customer.
We both use Dynepo which Boogerd got through a Slovenian athlete called Bostjan Buc. During the Tour Michael and I both take 8 syringes containing
2000 units of the stuff. I am not afraid to get caught; Dynepo is untraceable according to Michael, and I believe him. We also use cortisones every other day. The product name is Diprofos. We have a TUE for that. I couldn’t even remember what for, it was a complete joke. Cortisones allow us to dig much deeper in the race. It also helps to get you nice and thin: I am 68 kilo at 1 meter 88 - I’ve never been that light in my career, ever.The start is in Londen. We arrive there a week in advance. On the Thursday before the start, there is a UCI doping test. My hematocrit level is 45 points, Michael’s is 50. He is on the edge of the edge. He is a risk; one point higher and he will be caught. The team doctors suggest that he uses a water bag every morning at six, before the doping control gets there, to get his hematocrit level down a couple of points.
That evening, we are getting bored in the hotel room. We opened a bottle of wine, but that’s not quite entertaining enough for us. Alcohol is fun, but women are even more fun. So I go online and search for some escort girls. At one o’clock in the morning there’s a couple of Eastern European hookers at our hotel room door. Michael and I are a bit disappointed with their appearance compared to the photos online. It’s not very glamourous, in the middle of the night in our small hotel room. We both choose a girl. Around three o’clock we get to sleep. At six, the alarm clock rings and Michael has to get out of bed to water down his blood. For the first couple of days, Van Mantgem sticks the needle in his arm, later he does this himself. In the beginning I awake when the alarm goes, but I get used to it after a couple of days. At six he’s busy with baxters of water, I turn around in my bed ansd sleep on. If there is something like a pretty normal life, we’re on the other side of the universe from that.
In the 2007 Tour our team is one of the best of the peloton. Next to Boogerd my team mates are Michael Rasmussen, Denis Mensjov, Óscar Freire, Pieter Weening, Juan Antonio Flecha, Grischa Niermann and Bram de Groot. At the team meeting before the start, Rasmussen says that he wants to win the Tour. We laugh a little. I think it’s bravado. We don’t know yet that he has lied about his whereabouts and we don’t know he’s filled to the brim with PED’s - although we have suspicions. We also don’t know he’s been getting syringes of Dynepo from our stash: we only get to hear that after the Tour’s over.
Rasmussen is so thin we can look right through him. If he eats anything at all it’s a rice wafer with nothing on it. In one of the first, flat stages he’s behind me as the peloton splits. He yells to me to get aside into the wind and let him get behind me. It’s a bit laughable I think at that moment. I fight the urge to yell back ‘fuck off’. But since I don’t feel my chain at all I do as he requests anyway.
Rasmussen turns out to be right; he is very, very good. In the first real mountain stage he attacks with 60k to go. We only see him back after the finish in Tignes, in the yellow jersey. The atmosphere at the table is great that evening. There’s Champagne for everyone - Rasmussen drinks almost nothing of it - and the team management keeps on ordering bottles. From that day on, we ride for Rasmussen. We’re starting to believe that this weird Dane can win the Tour de France.
Other riders are caught at the doping controls; they leave through the Tour’s back door. We never speak about it at the table. Not even when stories start to emerge that Rasmussen has lied and was in Mexico before the Tour. We don’t ask Rasmussen anything about it. To be fair, we have a certain respect for him. He’s been smart, Boogerd and I think. He thought out a system for himself and apparently it’s working very well, because he’s in the yellow jersey. Simple as that. Doping is everywhere. In our team, in other teams. Dynepo, Cortisones, blood bags, baxters of water and sleeping pills - when you see so much absurd things around you every day, you will start to think of it as normal.
The last mountain stage takes us to the summit of the Aubisque. We have to make sure Rasmussen keeps his lead after the Pyrenees. The stage starts tamely, but the more we start to climb, the more attacks are made. We have to go at it full gas. But that’s no problem, I can’t feel my legs anyway. I am a one man team that day. I pull on the way up the mountain, I lead the descent, I lead in the valley. The peloton on my wheel gets smaller and smaller. Rasmussen shouts to me I that shouldn’t overdo it. It is my best day on the bike ever.
Just before the last climb, I let Rasmussen take over. I can see he’s stil very fresh. I know it before the stage is over: we got it. We won the Tour de France. On the bus, we’re all euphoric. High fives and talks of partying in Paris all around. But during the bus ride to the hotel, the atmosphere changes. Theo de Rooij gets a phone call. His face now a frown. He walks to the back of the bus, to the showers, so we can’t hear. I understand it’s bad news. When the bus arrives at the hotel in Pau, our happiness has faded a bit. We don’t believe this Mexico thing will have any real consequences - right up to the moment Rasmussen knocks on the door of our hotel room. I can see he’s been crying when he steps into the room. ‘They’re taking me out of the Tour,’ he says. Boogerd says ‘What? What do you mean?’ Rasmussen stammers: ‘Theo does. Theo is taking me out of the Tour.’ I get up from my bed. Boogerd is mad, and so am I. We tell Rasmussen we’re going to take care of things and sort it out with De Rooij. We find him in his room. Immediately we start yelling at him. ‘What is this nonsense? Taking Rasmussen out of the Tour? How can you do this?’ But no matter how we yell, pray or beg, De Rooij does not budge. ‘He has to get out.’
Boogerd and I feel fucked over. I feel like I’ve been pulling at the front of the peloton for jack shit. It’s not even the prize money we stand to lose that concerns me, most of all the victory that we worked for as a team was stolen from us. I am in a cocoon, of different laws and morals. Rasmussen lied. So what? We all did things we shouldn’t have, by the book? The team doctors helped us to dope. I never spoke about doping to De Rooij, but I cannot imagine he thinks Rasmussen could win the Tour without PED’s. He’s not a moron is he? The policy he and Breukink use is at best ‘look away’. They demand us to be good in the races, but they don’t want to know how. They don’t ask, so they don’t know the facts.
Late at night, there’s a meeting in the team bus. It feels like a funeral. We are angry, we are sad, we are frustrated. We unanimously decide not to start the next day. There will be a flight tomorrow. The elastic band finally snaps. I’m done, completely. The fatigue of all the stages we rode kicks in at once.
I’m not hungry: I eat nothing that night. Instead, me and the whole team start drinking. Heavily. At four AM Boogerd and I drop into our hotel beds. Three hours later, Breukink knocks on the door. Please start today, he says. The future of the team is in danger: the bank wants us to continue. I say: ‘No way.’ Michael gives in fairly easily though, to my surprise. I walk into the bathroom angrily and lie down in the bath, running the cold tap. ‘Fuck them all’, I think. Like hell I am going to start today. After about 15 minutes, the driver of the team bus, Piet, comes to the bathroom and sits down beside me. He ruffles my hair with his hand and says he can full well understand I don’t weant to ride, but that it is better to get on the bike. ‘If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for the team. For all of us.’
I sigh and hoist myself out of the bath. More than an hour before leaving for the start, I’m already in the team bus. I look out the window through teary eyes. This was not the way I imagined my first Tour de France. When we get out at the start, the audience is yelling at us. They shout 'dopage' and 'tricheurs'. Michael almost hits a guy that shouts something about doping in Dutch in the face. The last four days I drag myself to Paris. There was supposed to be a big party, from where we would ride on a yellow train, all the way to the Rabobank’s headquarters in Utrecht. Instead, we meet in just a room in just a hotel in Paris. There’s nothing to celebrate.
In the weeks, months years after, there’s no evaluation of that Tour. It is like no one wants to know what happened. Nobody asks us anything. Not De Rooij, not Breukink, not the bank. No one speaks of the Tour of 2007.
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Thanks @peter_v
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"We have to go at it full gas. But that’s no problem, I can’t feel my legs anyway. I am a one man team that day. I pull on the way up the mountain, I lead the descent, I lead in the valley. The peloton on my wheel gets smaller and smaller. "
a bit like Sagan must have felt on the penultimate stage of the Tour this year. hm.
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Zonneveld gets a lot of shit in press and on social media. Says this book took 3 years and all those mentioned were contacted for reactions to it.
Bram Tankink's tweets are always funny ('just finished a bottle of wine, what to do now?'), although I don't quite know what Boogerd's reply is about ('can I have your number in a pm, I'd like to share something with you')
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Some background info on the process
http://www.velonews.com/2016/11/news/dekker-biographer-boogerd-living-lie_425034
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EPO for 38th... well done, fuckwit
http://www.rawcyclingmag.com/en/mario-paz-duque/
https://www.instagram.com/mariopazduque/
#mariopazduque -
Coached by Carlos Barredo too.
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Tattoos aren't the only thing that lot are using needles for.
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this news makes me sad
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What was in the jiffy bag?
hippy
andyp
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peter_v
thross
Mickie_Cricket
umop3pisdn
Dry
WillMelling
Scrabble
skinny
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Doping
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@rpm
So, it's cheaper if I win. Wish they'd hurry up and invent a £5 swab test for this kind of shit.