Thomas Dekker (born 6 September 1984) is a Dutch former professional road racing cyclist. His career highlights included winning Tirreno–Adriatico in 2006 and Tour de Romandie in 2007. He won two Dutch National Time Trial Championships and represented his country at the 2004 Summer Olympics held in Athens, Greece. A few days before the start of the 2009 Tour de France, it was announced that Dekker had tested positive for EPO in a retroactive test carried out on a urine sample taken in December 2007. Dekker initially protested his innocence but he later admitted to using EPO, claiming it was a one-time mistake. He eventually admitted to using EPO over at least parts of the 2007 and 2008 seasons, although he declined to give exact dates. Dekker was suspended for two years, from 1 July 2009 to 30 June 2011. Dekker's career has been marked by other doping allegations. He was a client of Luigi Cecchini, an Italian doctor who was investigated in relation to doping matters, though Dekker adamantly denies that Cecchini was involved in his doping. In 2009 he was also questioned in the Humanplasma doping scandal, a suspected doping ring connected to Austrian manager Stefan Matschiner. Dekker retired in March 2015 after narrowly failing to set a new world hour record. Career Early years Dekker was born and raised in Dirkshorn, North Holland, Netherlands. He was nicknamed "The hulk from Dirkshorn" and joined the Rabobank junior team in 2002, winning the Junior National time trial championships, among other races. In 2003 he joined , the continental team of , winning two stages of Ster Elekrotoer, and the national under-23 titles in the Road Race and Time Trial disciplines. He also finished third in the Men's under-23 road race of the 2003 UCI Road World Championships. In 2004 he won the Tour de Normandie, Olympia's Tour, the Dutch National Time Trial Championships and also participated in the 2004 Summer Olympics at the age of 19, finishing 21st in the individual time trial. Later in the season he also won the Grand Prix Eddy Merckx with Koen de Kort but crashed out of the Tour de l'Avenir while he was leading the race. In September he joined the UCI ProTeam for the rest of the 2004 season as a stagiaire. He won a stage of Rheinland-Pfalz Rundfahrt, finished second in both the U23 individual time trial and U23 road