Jeroen Blijlevens
 |
|
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Full name | Jeroen Johannes Hendrikus Blijlevens |
| Born |
29 December 1971 Gilze en Rijen, the Netherlands |
| Team information | |
| Current team | Retired |
| Discipline | Road |
| Role | Rider |
| Professional team(s) | |
| 1994–1999 | TVM |
| 2000 | Team Polti |
| 2001 | Lotto |
| 2002 | Domo |
| 2003–2004 | BankGiroLoterij |
| Managerial team(s) | |
| 2013 | LottoNL–Jumbo |
Jeroen Johannes Hendrikus Blijlevens (born 29 December 1971 in Gilze en Rijen, North Brabant) is a retired road bicycle racer from the Netherlands, who was a professional rider from 1994 to 2004.
Nicknamed Jerommeke, he was one of Holland's leading sprinters in the 1990s, claiming victories in the three big races (Tour de France, Vuelta a España and Giro d'Italia). He won a total number of 74 races in his professional career. After retirement he worked as a cycling co-commentator at Eurosport Netherlands.
Blijlevens was born in 1971, as a son of a shoe sales man. In 1990, he won his first race as an amateur. He scored nineteen victories as an amateur, and at the end of 1993 was signed by Cees Priem for TVM–Bison Kit. Blijlevens showed good results in his first years, and in 1995 was selected to ride the Tour de France, where he won the fifth stage. Blijlevens, not a good climber, left the race before the Alps.
In 1996, Blijlevens again won a stage in the Tour de France. In 1997, he finished second to Erik Zabel in the sixth stage of the Tour de France, but when the jury disqualified Zabel for irregular sprinting, the victory was given to Blijlevens. In 1998 Blijlevens on the fourth stage of the Tour. That Tour was full of doping allegations, also towards the TVM team, and as soon as the race had past the French-Swiss border, Blijlevens left the race, as a protest against the treatments by the French police.
In 1999, Blijlevens wore the pink jersey as leader of the general classification in the Giro d'Italia, after winning the third stage. After the events of 1998, the TVM team was excluded from the 1999 Tour de France. The cyclists of TVM started a legal procedure to force the Tour organisers to invite them, but failed. At the end of that year, Blijlevens left TVM for Team Polti.
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