Gerben Karstens (born 14 January 1942 in Voorburg,
Zuid-Holland) is a former
professional racing cyclist from the Netherlands,
who won the gold medal in the 100 km team trial at the Summer Olympics" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Summer_Olympics">1964 Summer Olympics, alongside Bart
Zoet, Evert Dolman, and Jan
Pieterse. At the same Olympics he finished 27th in the Individual
road race.

After the Olympic Games, Karstens started a successful professional
career, where he won six stages in the France" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France">Tour de France, 14 stages in the España" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuelta_a_Espa%C3%B1a">Vuelta a España, 1 stage in the d'Italia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_d%27Italia">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.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.

www.gerbenkarstens.com