Frank Vandenbroucke

iainf72

aarw wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

3 people have been arrested for stealing a phone and cash from VDB

Before or after he died?

One of them was the girl he was with the night before. She's said he was alive when she left.

ms_tree

I saw this on Ceefax last night. First thought another poor lad dead at 34. V sad.
2nd thought I'm not going on the forum 'cos the usual suspects will be saying all sorts of nasty things. Just lit a candle.

PS I had a pulmonary embolism at 24 so whoever said 34 was strange doesn't know what he is talking about.

jerry3571

It must be time that cycling put it's hand in it's pocket and had some kind of Hospital for broken ex pros.
Riders who's careers have ended with a ban or loss of contract.
It seems that riders have to be put through the meat grinder as a Pro and then spat out when they are finished.
Pantani, Jiminez, VDB and many others to which we do not hear. I'm sure there must be tens if not hundreds of washed up ex pros who are totally mashed from drugs and a sport that doesn't care. They have got the choice to walk but like a moth to the flame they keep on coming back.
With mentors such as 'Dr' Mabuse who I just read about with Bernard Sainz; well..how does a 20 year old resist them.
When you watch Cycling on telly; this dark side of racing seems impossible.

I'm 100% aware that this Hospital idea can never work as it's an admission of failure but the next VDB or J-M Jiminez is already out there riding.
Boonen, and Kohl or maybe the next positive doper could be next through the meat grinder. It's only a matter of time I guess.
-Jerry

PS- Sorry about that above; bit fanciful and downbeat but wish we could have the racing without the bad bits.

dave_1

VDBs psychiatrist, I wonder how he helped him in some ways?..assuming VDB listened. The last thing VDB needed was professional cycling...he has probably had no real occupation for 5 or 6 years given how quickly he's dropped out of teams. He needed to leave cycling, work in something else perhaps? get away from the pressure of it and the expectations. You all have your own jobs outwith cycling, VDB needed that too

iainf72

Confirmed pulmonary embolism with pre-existing heart condition as cause of death.

afx237vi

Dave_1 wrote:

VDBs psychiatrist, I wonder how he helped him in some ways?..assuming VDB listened. The last thing VDB needed was professional cycling...he has probably had no real occupation for 5 or 6 years given how quickly he's dropped out of teams. He needed to leave cycling, work in something else perhaps? get away from the pressure of it and the expectations. You all have your own jobs outwith cycling, VDB needed that too

I agree with that, and said the same thing about Tyler Hamilton, but how do you do it? Hamilton and VDB weren't being kept there against their will - they both still wanted to be cyclists, despite that environment being a bad place for them.

The only way is for a friend or a family member to step in and intervene... but as we saw with Pantani, when there's money to be made, real friends aren't easy to find.

dave_1

afx237vi wrote:

Dave_1 wrote:

VDBs psychiatrist, I wonder how he helped him in some ways?..assuming VDB listened. The last thing VDB needed was professional cycling...he has probably had no real occupation for 5 or 6 years given how quickly he's dropped out of teams. He needed to leave cycling, work in something else perhaps? get away from the pressure of it and the expectations. You all have your own jobs outwith cycling, VDB needed that too

I agree with that, and said the same thing about Tyler Hamilton, but how do you do it? Hamilton and VDB weren't being kept there against their will - they both still wanted to be cyclists, despite that environment being a bad place for them.

The only way is for a friend or a family member to step in and intervene... but as we saw with Pantani, when there's money to be made, real friends aren't easy to find.

Absolutely agree, it takes strong interventions. I don't know all about the Gerlach case but I see the parents of Gerlach have forbid the Italian team manager from going out onto the streets to drag the guy back to cycling. That is best. Gerlach , based on the interviews I've read , needs cycling like a hole in the head, like VDB , like pantani and others who can't move on.


Perhaps VDB somehow felt he could still prove himself via cycling instead of just leaving it for the joke the post Festina clean up sport was.

I think for VDB, I would imagine the handcuffing and being in the news like that being dragged away by cops must have hurt.

dave_1

I wonder if the parents, those left behind, have grounds to sue the UCI as the UCI issued licenses to teams, to staff of those teams, who are unfit to be in charge of young people given that in some of the teams where doping was team wide that very doping for sports could quite plausibly have led the athlete to recreational drug abuse and death in the case of Pantani, Jiminez?

If you were a parent and saw a sport turn your son or daughter into a drug addict when the governing body is not protecting them from corrupted management- ex pros who are ex dopers manage the rider-, you'd want compensated, no?

Steve Tcp

Depends on the parents though. Iirc Willy Voet's dad encouraged him to take peds then, when he stopped and his performance dropped off accordingly, he refused to speak to him. I'm sure there are other parents like that.

afx237vi

Steve Tcp wrote:

Depends on the parents though. Iirc Willy Voet's dad encouraged him to take peds then, when he stopped and his performance dropped off accordingly, he refused to speak to him. I'm sure there are other parents like that.

You only have to watch a sport like tennis to see how crazy some parents can get when their kids get a sniff of stardom. Cycling is probably no different.

frenchfighter

'She' is Seynabou Diop, the Senegalese prostitute linked to VDB.

“Frank was a charming and funny man. But he drank a lot. Very soon we had finished a bottle of champagne and a bottle of whiskey,” she told Beglium’s Het Laatste Nieuws in Senegal.

“He began by telling me how pretty I was. He wanted to marry me and bring me back to Belgium, he said. If I went with him I would also become a star. I thought he was an important photographer,” she said.

“When we arrived in the hotel La Maison Bleue, Frank was extremely drunk. He got sick, threw up and I cleaned it up. Sex was not in the question. Around half past 5 in the morning I left. When I returned in the afternoon his door was closed. I went into his room with the hotel manager and there we found his lifeless body. Next to his bed lay his bag with personal items and medication. And also a syringe and coffee spoon,” Diop said from prison in Thies. She has been charged for the theft of his cellular phones.

“I really did not do that. I’m not crazy, stealing from a dead tourist! I think he lost his cell phones when he fell into the taxi,” she claimed.

Autopsy details revealed that Vandenbroucke died of a double lung embolism superimposed by a pre-existant heart condition that might have been triggered by the use of alcohol or drugs.

frenchfighter

Also, Hoogerland had “pers te VDB” written on his shirt, meaning “for you VDB”, when he rode Lombardia.

afx237vi

frenchfighter wrote:

Also, Hoogerland had “pers te VDB” written on his shirt, meaning “for you VDB”, when he rode Lombardia.

I was wondering what that said. Cheers.