was found to contain the banned substance EPO. Silence–Lotto immediately removed him from their team for the 2009 Tour de France. Once his B-sample confirmed the EPO positive, Silence-Lotto fired Dekker, who admitted doping, apologizing and calling it "a mistake". The Monaco Cycling Federation, where Dekker held his racing license, announced on 3 March 2010 that Dekker had been suspended for two years, until 1 July 2011. In addition, the UCI stripped Dekker of all of his results from 24 December 2007, the date of his positive. According to UCI, Dekker was singled out as a result of the biological passport programme, prompting the UCI to conduct a detailed review of past doping controls. Return with Garmin Dekker returned to racing on 6 July 2011 in the Grote Prijs Stad St. Niklaas, where he finished 70th. On 1 August he announced that he had signed with the , the development team of . On 18 September he won his first race after his comeback. He won the Duo Normand Team Time Trial together with Paris–Roubaix winner Johan Vansummeren. team manager Jonathan Vaughters challenged the two to beat the time he himself rode in 2001 with Jens Voigt. Dekker and Vansummeren beat the time of Vaughters and Voigt. On 18 November 2011, Dekker was confirmed as a rider for the 2012 season. He left the team in November 2014. Dekker subsequently announced that he would focus on an attempt to break the world hour record in the spring of 2015 instead of finding a new team for the road cycling season. Doping In a 2013 interview with Dutch daily newspaper NRC Handelsblad, Dekker stated that he started using performance-enhancing drugs when he joined in 2005. In that team doping (including EPO) had been used since the mid-1990s, and Dekker stated that it was part of the profession: "doping was a way of life". Documents obtained during the Operación Puerto doping case proved that Dekker had been a customer of Eufemiano Fuentes, a well-known sports doctor who had assisted the Kelme team and many cycling professionals with blood doping; Spanish police found bags of Dekker's blood (Dekker was code-named "rider 24" and "Clasicómano Luigi"), and it turned out that he had had at least two transfusions in the spring of 2006, one four days before winning the Tirreno–Adriatico and another before riding the Tour of the Basque Country. In his interview with