“There were all sorts of inexplicable achievements” – Robert Gesink talks about the pervasive presence of doping in the late 2000s
Robert Gesink spent 18 seasons at professional level, during which time he oversaw the transformation of the infamous Rabobank into Visma | Lease a Bike – the No. 1 team in the world in 2023. After hanging up his bike at the end of this season, he is learning a new role that includes sharing funny anecdotes about his previous ones Teammates heard.
In the early days of Rabobank, two important personalities were active in the team: Denis Menchov and Oscar Freire. Gesink told an amazing story about the former in the podcast “De Rode Lantaarn”. “Menchov always said he was allowed to smoke one cigarette a day until January camp. Then he stands on the balcony and smokes a cigarette. That’s where the sport comes from, haha.”
There are also many anecdotes about the Spanish sprinter Freire and Gesink can easily add one to this. “Freire trained for two days in a training camp, but on the third day he had problems with his knee. Then we came back from training and he was playing tennis against the hotel waiter or something.”
Gesink also addresses more serious topics in the podcast. One of them includes his debut in 2007 – at a time when doping was still rampant in the cycling world – and how he found himself at a crossroads about which path his career should take:
“At the time I was pretty unsure about what the future would look like. I didn’t want to go in that direction, but I didn’t see much change in the meantime. There were still all sorts of inexplicable achievements. I thought.”: What will it look like in the future? In the end I never thought about it because someone like Louis Delahaje just said we wouldn’t start with it. I’m proud of how I experienced my sport. But at the time I thought: If I continue like this, I won’t achieve everything I want to achieve.”
