Gerben Karstens

Gerben Karstens
Personal information
Full name	Gerben Karstens
Born	14 January 1942; Voorburg, German-occupied Netherlands
Died	8 October 2022 (aged 80); Dongen, Netherlands
Team information
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	Sprinter
Professional teams
1965	Televizier
1966–1967	Televizier–Batavus
1968–1970	Peugeot–BP–Michelin
1971	Goudsmit–Hoff
1972–1973	Rokado
1974	Bic
1975	Gitane–Campagnolo
1976–1978	TI–Raleigh
1979–1980	De Vleeschmeesters
Medal record
Representing the Netherlands
Men's road bicycle racing
Olympic Games

Gerben Karstens (14 January 1942 – 8 October 2022)^[1] was a Dutch professional racing cyclist, who won the gold medal in the 100 km team trial at the 1964 Summer Olympics, alongside Bart Zoet, Evert Dolman, and Jan Pieterse. At the same Olympics he finished 27th in the individual road race. Karstens ranks 6th in all-time stage wins in Vuelta a España history.

Biography

After the Olympic Games, Karstens started a successful professional career, where he won six stages in the Tour de France, 14 stages in the Vuelta a España, 1 stage in the Giro d'Italia, and other races such as Paris–Tours and GP Fourmies. He became Dutch national road race champion in 1966.

In the 1974 Tour de France, Karstens finished second in the fourth stage. Afterwards, he forgot to take the doping tests. The tour organisation set him back to the last place of the stage results, and gave him 10 minutes penalty time in the overall classification, which made him lose his third place.^[2] One day later, the jury took the penalty time back. Thanks to 5 seconds of bonification that Karstens won during intermediate sprints, he took over the yellow jersey from Eddy Merckx.^[3] He wore yellow for one stage before losing it to Patrick Sercu after stage 6A, but he reclaimed the overall lead after stage 6B to spend another stage in Yellow before Merckx took over the lead for the remainder of the Tour.

Karstens died of complications from a stroke on 8 October 2022, at the age of 80.^[4]