Gert-Jan Theunisse

Gert-Jan Theunisse is a Dutch former road racing cyclist who turned professional in 1984 with the Panasonic team. He won the 1988 Clásica San Sebastián and, in the 1989 Tour de France, took the King of the Mountains classification and the stage up Alpe d'Huez. His career was marked by doping controls: a positive testosterone test at the 1988 Tour de France cost him a ten-minute penalty that dropped him from fourth to eleventh overall, and he tested positive again in 1990. He stopped racing in 1995 on medical advice for heart trouble and became an adviser and team manager for mountain biker Bart Brentjens, who went on to win Olympic gold in 1996. After a car struck him in 1997 and left him with a spinal cord injury, he returned to mountain biking and kept racing marathons until 2005.