Dekker injures both knees in Canada crashes

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Thomas Dekker's has been forced to pull out of Sunday's GP de Montreal after sustaining injures to both knees in two crashes.

Dekker had been in consideration for Garmin's world championships team time trial squad, but now must fear that his place is in jeopardy, as well as the rest of his season.

He injured his right knee in a crash while testing the prologue course in the Tour of Alberta on September 3. At that time, his management tweeted,”he is ok, but he will need to accelerate from his saddle in the prologue. His focus is to make the World TTT squad.”

He was able to ride out the whole race, which was won by his teammate and roomate Rohan Dennis.

From there the team moved east to prepare for the GP de Quebec, where disaster struck again, as Dekker crashed again, inuring his left knee. He had to abandon the race, and watched the ending of it from his bed in his hotel room, which he tweeted was “not easy”.

The Dutchman, who turned 29 last week, was scheduled to ride today's GP Montreal as well, “Flying back tonight. Knee is hurting too much. Monday I have to take a scan... Dissapointed..!!” he tweeted on Saturday.

The run of bad luck weighed heavily on him. “For me the last 2 weeks it's everyday friday the 13th. Bad crash again. When does the bad luck going to finish...???"

Very little has gone as planned this year for Dekker in this, his second year with Garmin-Sharp and his second full year back from his doping suspension.  He started the year off by making a full doping confession to the Dutch federation, and between that and the spate of other former Rabobank riders' confessions, admitted that “I had a lot on my mind with all those doping confessions. Then your head is not always in training and competitions."