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Credit: Gavandanna (Creative Commons Licence)
Michael “Bovine Haemoglobin” Rassmussen has gone on a bit of a bizarre media blitz over the last few days. The Danish climber was booted out of the 2007 Tour de France while wearing the yellow jersey. During the race it emerged that several out of competition doping controls and had lied about his whereabouts prior to the race, having been seen training in Italy when he had said he was in Mexico. To make matters worse, a former moutain biking colleague told the media that Rasmussen had tried to get him to smuggle doping products into Italy on his behalf.
Rasmussen’s ban ended late last year and this year he is racing for the Italian Continental feam Miche-Silvercross. The team is essentially a third division outfit, which means Rasmussen has no hope of reappearing at the big races on the calendar.
Since his ban, Rasmussen hasn’t exactly come across as the most repentant character in the media, alleging at the time of his comeback that the UCI had effectively blacklisted him from joining top level teams.
This weekend though he appeared to turn it up a notch. “If some persons were dead and buried, I would probably be happier, but I am not going to hire a couple of Colombian gangsters to make it a reality,” he told Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet.
In an interview with Danish website Weekendavisen.dk, he listed UCI boss Pat McQuaid, Tour de France organisers ASO, the Danish Cycling Union and its president Jasper Worre, his former team Rabobank, the Danish government and the Danish sports media as among those peopel he was none to happy with.
He then went on to say that Norwegian sprinter and two time green jersey winner Thor Hushovd had also missed doping controls prior to the 2007 Tour, a fact that both Hushovd and the then president of the Norwegian Cycling Federation both denied.
Rasmussen subsequently moved to calm things, claiming that he had been quoted out of context when he said he wanted people dead, but by then the genie was out of the bottle. UCI president Pat McQuaid told reporters that his health was excellent “and I do not intend to die”.
Amid all of these outbursts from Rasmussen, he also expressed the desire to rejoin the Saxo Bank team, who he previously raced with before joining Rabobank. “If Bjarne Riis said, ‘I want Michael Rasmussen in the Tour de France,’ I’d ride the race for the team….I think I might tip the balance. I believe that I could be the one who decides who should win the Tour de France this year. If I ride for CSC [sic], I believe that I can ensure that CSC could win”.
If he wants a contract from Saxo Bank, he sure is going an interesting way about it.
Yellow jersey holder Michael Rasmussen is really in the manure business, as it has emerged that he has missed four out of competition doping controls this year. To make matters worse, a former acquaintance from his mountain biking days has now come forward saying Rasmussen tried to dupe him into smuggling blood doping products to Italy in 2002. Whitney Richards told his story off the record to journalists on two occasions before now, but what prompted him to go public now was Rasmussen’s declaration on Monday that the public could trust him.
After dominating in the Alps, Rasmussen has his biggest test today at the time trial in Albi. As we all found out in 2005, he couldn’t TT his way out of a paper bag:
