Karsten Kroon

Karsten Kroon
	Kroon at the 2012 Tour de France
Personal information
Full name	Karsten Kroon
Born	29 January 1976 (age 45); Dalen, the Netherlands
Height	1.80 m (5 ft 11 in)
Weight	67 kg (148 lb; 10.6 st)
Team information
Current team	Retired
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	Classics rider
Professional teams
1997–2005	Rabobank
2006–2009	Team CSC
2010–2011	BMC Racing Team
2012–2014	Team Saxo Bank
Major wins
	Grand Tours Tour de France 1 individual stage (2002) Single-day races and Classics Rund um den Henninger Turm (2004, 2008)

Karsten Kroon (born 29 January 1976) is a Dutch former professional road bicycle racer who most recently rode for Tinkoff, a UCI ProTeam.^[1] He retired at the end of the 2014 season.^[2]

Career[]

Born in Dalen, Kroon showed his talent as an amateur by winning the professional Ronde van Drenthe in 1996. He joined the Rabobank youth squad in 1997 and won a number of amateur races in two years. In 1999, he moved to the senior squad. His few wins included stage 8, on Bastille Day, of the 2002 Tour de France. Kroon and his teammate, Erik Dekker, finished in a seven-man group, and Kroon won a stage in his first Tour de France with the help of the more experienced Dekker.^[3] Kroon led the mountains classification in each of the three Grand Tours, though his lead did not last to the end.^[4]

On 10 August 2005 he said that, until 2007, he was to ride for Saxo Bank. He wanted more freedom. "I've never said that I want to be leader," he told Cyclingnews.com, "I only want to get chances".^[5] In March and April 2006, he was joint team captain in ProTour races. He finished in the top ten of Tirreno–Adriatico and the Tour of Flanders. He helped Fränk Schleck win the Amstel Gold Race by disrupting the chase when Schleck attacked; Kroon finished fourth.^[6] Kroon finally finished on the podium, in La Flèche Wallonne, third in front of Schleck. He also came second in the 2009 Amstel Gold Race, just behind Serguei Ivanov.

In 2010, Kroon joined BMC Racing Team,^[7] but returned to Team Saxo Bank for the 2012 season.^[1]

Doping[]

On 24 April 2018, it was reported that Kroon had confessed to doping for "a short period during my career". He added: "I was a professional cyclist in a very difficult time and I have a lot of respect for my colleagues who resisted the temptation to use doping."^[8]