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Rasmussen's appeal rejected

Published: Jan. 22, 2009
Rasmussen cannot appeal to a higher authority and won't compete until the end of July.
Rasmussen cannot appeal to a higher authority and won't compete until the end of July.
Photo: Graham Watson

The International Court of Arbitration for Sport has rejected Michael Rasmussen’s challenge that his two-year suspension for a doping-related offense was too severe.

The sporting world’s final court of appeals ruled that a two-year ban originally handed down by Monaco’s national cycling federation was appropriate and that Rasmussen’s request that it be lessened was not justified.

Rasmussen, who carried a professional license in Monaco, was originally suspended after news of his deceptive reports regarding his whereabouts during early season training came to light at the height of the 2007 Tour de France.

Rasmussen was subsequently fired by his Rabobank team, although he has since won a civil wrongful dismissal case against the team.

Rasmussen’s two-year suspension will expire at the end of July, allowing him to return to professional cycling. However, with the exception of Liquigas, ProTour teams have established a voluntary rule precluding the hiring of riders found guilty of doping offenses for four years, or until July 2011 in Rasmussen’s case.

Mexico or Italy?

Rasmussen has consistently denied allegations of doping, but he was thrown out of the 2007 Tour by his own team, while wearing the yellow jersey, because he to have given misleading comments on his whereabouts for out-of-competition testing.

In the spring of 2007, Rasmussen was reportedly training in Italy, despite having reported that he was in when anti-doping controllers failed to find him in Europe to carry out random tests.

Rasmussen’s two-year ban, retroactively dated to July 26, 2007, was imposed last June, but the Danish rider filed an appeal, which was heard in November of 2008.

The three-member CAS panel affirmed the decision by the original hearing panel, noting that a "two-year suspension was the appropriate sanction in Mr. Rasmussen's case."

In reaching its decision the panel said that Rasmussen had violated articles 15.3 and 15.5 of the UCI’s anti-doping rules because:

● He did not announce his new location to the UCI which prevented the Danish Anti-Doping Agency (ADD) from making a doping control at his domicile on 6 April 2007;

● He was too late in transmitting information relating to his new whereabouts in June 2007;

● He voluntarily transmitted erroneous whereabouts information which prevented the ADD from making a doping control on 21 June 2007.

The incident rocked cycling's flagship race and the Dane later admitted he had lied over his whereabouts, citing “personal reasons” for having done so. Nonetheless, the CAS panel said he had violated UCI rules by effectively preventing anti-doping authorities from conducting tests in both April and June of 2007.

Email Charles Pelkey