Jeroen Blijlevens

Jeroen Blijlevens

Personal information
Full name	Jeroen Johannes Hendrikus Blijlevens
Born	(1971-12-29) 29 December 1971 Gilze en Rijen, the Netherlands
Team information
Current team	Retired
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Professional team(s)
1994–1999 2000 2001 2002 2003–2004	TVM Team Polti Lotto Domo BankGiroLoterij
Managerial team(s)
2013	Belkin Pro Cycling
Infobox last updated on 25 July 2013

Jeroen Johannes Hendrikus Blijlevens (born 29 December 1971 in Gilze en Rijen, North Brabant) is a retired road bicycle racer from the Netherlands, who was a professional rider from 1994 to 2004.

Nicknamed Jerommeke, he was one of Holland's leading sprinters in the 1990s, claiming victories in the three big races (Tour de France, Vuelta and Giro d'Italia). He won a total number of 74 races in his professional career. After retirement he worked as a cycling co-commentator at Eurosport Netherlands.

Biography

Blijlevens was born in 1971, as a son of a shoe sales man. In 1990, he won his first race as an amateur.^[1] He scored nineteen victories as an amateur,^[1] and at the end of 1993 was signed by Cees Priem for TVM-Bison Kit.^[2] Blijlevens showed good results in his first years, and in 1995 was selected to ride the Tour de France,^[3] where he won the fifth stage.^[1] Blijlevens, not a good climber, left the race before the Alps.^[4]

In 1996, Blijlevens again won a stage in the Tour de France. In 1997, he finished second to Erik Zabel in the sixth stage of the Tour de France, but when the jury disqualified Zabel for irregular sprinting, the victory was given to Blijlevens.^[5] In 1998 Blijlevens on the fourth stage of the Tour. That Tour was full of doping allegations, also towards the TVM team, and as soon as the race had past the French-Swiss border, Blijlevens left the race, as a protest against the treatments by the French police.^[6]

In 1999, Blijlevens wore the pink jersey as leader of the general classification in the Giro d'Italia, after winning the third stage.^[7] After the events of 1998, the TVM team was excluded from the 1999 Tour de France. The cyclists of TVM started a legal procedure to force the Tour organisers to invite them, but failed.^[8] At the end of that year, Blijlevens left TVM for Team Polti.

In 2000, Blijlevens invested in his climbing-abilities, but this did not work out as planned, and Blijlevens was not as successful as before. He failed to win a stage in the 2000 Tour de France, and was even disqualified in the last stage after fighting with Bobby Julich.^[9] When Polti stopped as a sponsor at the end of the year, Blijlevens signed for Lotto-Adecco for 2001.^[10]

In 2001, Blijlevens rode the 2001 Giro d'Italia, where the Italian police raided his team's hotel, but no forbidden products were found. As a protest against this treatment, the cyclists refused to start the eighteenth stage.^[11]

At the end of 2001, Blijlevens could not find a new team, and made plans to ride as an amateur again,^[12] but finally he signed a contract for one year at Domina Vacanze . Blijlevens rode for a low base salary, with bonuses for victories.^[13] After a year full of injuries, Blijlevens was not given a contract for 2004, and switched to the Bankgiroloterij team.^[14]

After his retirement at the end of 2004, Blijlevens made plans to break the speed record on a bicycle,^[15] but failed to do so.

In June 2013 he became sports director of the new Belkin Pro Cycling team, and as part of a Dutch nationwide doping inquiry signed a statement saying he had never used doping.^[16] In July he was named in a French Senate report as one of many cyclists who had tested positive for EPO during retesting of samples from the 1998 Tour de France,^[17] Blijlevens then confessed that he had used EPO since 1997, and that he had lied in the investigation because he wanted to keep his job.^[18]

Palmarès

References

External links

• Jeroen Blijlevens profile at Cycling Archives
• Official Tour de France results for Jeroen Blijlevens