In 2013, when Michael Boogerd confessed to doping, detailing his use of EPO, blood transfusions and cortisone for the last decade of his career until he retired in 2007, his former Rabobank teammate and compatriot Thomas Dekker refused to comment. "You can ask anything, but I say nothing," Dekker said at the time.
Then, Dekker had already been banned for EPO, confessed to doping and said that doping was a "way of life at Rabobank". Now, in the book "Thomas Dekker, mijn gevecht (my fight)", by Dutch journalist Thijs Zonneveld, Dekker lays bare the sordid details of the Boogerd's final Tour de France with doping, bogus cortisone TUEs and prostitutes.
Dekker and Boogerd were roommates during the 2007 Tour de France, the then-22-year-old Dekker racing in his very first Tour, Boogerd in his last.
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In an excerpt of the Dekker book published by AD.nl, Dekker says Boogerd described to him how he had been using the Human Plasma blood bank through his manager Stefan Matschiner to blood dope. In addition to obtaining Dynepo (the blood booster EPO that is made in human cell lines and was thought to be undetectable) from a Slovenian athlete and injecting it eight times during the Tour de France, Dekker describes the abuse of the UCI's Therapeutic Use Exemptions
"Every day we use cortisone. The product name is Diprofos. We have a medical certificate," Dekker said. "I wouldn't even know what it's for, it is a sham. With cortisone we can go deeper during the race. And besides, I am nice and thin: I am 68 kilos at 1 meter 88 - I have never been so thin before."
Before the TUE application process was revamped after 2014, abuse of corticosteroids was commonplace. In 1999, Lance Armstrong received a back-dated TUE after a doping control during the Tour de France detected cortisone.
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