Noël Dejonckheere He passed away this Thursday at the age of 67 after struggling with a health problem in recent times. The former Belgian sprinter achieved his greatest successes on a bicycle in Spain, highlighting six stage wins in La Vuelta spread over the 1979, 1983 and 1984 editions. In addition, he managed to win the Luis Puig Trophy three times, ten stages in the Vuelta a la Comunitat Valenciana, seven in the Vuelta a Andalucía… in total there were 59 victories in his career, which lasted ten seasons (1979-1988), eight of them with the Teka team, a team with which he became a professional in 1979.
After his career, Dejonckheere held the role of team leader at Motorola in the support car, closely shadowing new talent and American racers, since he also worked for years for the American Cycling Federation and for the BMC team. Gordon Fraser, a Canadian cyclist who was closely linked to the Belgian, had a nice farewell on social networks: “My favorite memory of Noël was finishing Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in 1995 in totally hypothermic conditions, and upon finding out that I didn’t have a bathtub in my room, he took me to his house where a hot tub was waiting for me and he turned on the hot water for me. Plus, he loved the challenge of finding me cheap flights from Tucson to Brussels and vice versa. May he rest in peace.”