Femke Van den Driessche
Femke Van den Driessche in 2015 | |
| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Born | 27 August 1996 Asse, Belgium |
| Team information | |
| Current team | Kleur op Maat - Nodrugs |
| Discipline | Cyclo-cross Mountain bike Road cycling |
| Role | Rider |
Femke Van den Driessche (pronounced [ˈfɛmkə vɑn dɛn ˈdrisə]; born 27 August 1996) is a Belgian former cyclo-cross cyclist, mountainbiker and road racing cyclist. As a junior, she became national cyclo-cross champion in 2011 and mountain bike champion in 2013. In 2015, Van den Driessche won the European Cyclo-cross Championships in the women's under-23 category, and in 2016 she became Belgian champion in the same category, but she was later stripped of both titles.
She became the first cyclist to officially be charged with mechanical doping, which arose from an incident that occurred at the 2016 UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships. On 26 April 2016, she was retroactively banned from the sport for six years from 11 October 2015 until 10 October 2021, and all her results since that time shall be disqualified.