Rasmussen banned for two years. Why?

Posted by Mark on July 1, 2008 under opinion | Be the First to Comment

So Rasmussen was a naughty boy last year and told porky pies about where he was. Through all the reading I’ve done, it looks very much to me like:

a) He should’ve been in Mexico, or at least that’s what he told the UCI
b) He was actually in Italy, training, and his team knew this
c) The UCI knew all this two weeks before he was in yellow, but only decided to release the information to the world during the Tour de France, hence creating a massive media storm.

Rasmussen has never tested positive for anything. In amongst all this were rumours he’d missed a couple of out of competition tests. There was also a rumour, from a former team mate when he was mountain biking, that said team mate had received a shoe box full of drugs from Rasmussen. But rumour was all it was.

Now let’s look at ole Chicken Legs’ performance. He’s been able to climb like a daemon for a couple of years, but time trialling was never his strong point (remember that 2005 time trial where he binned it at least a couple of times en route?!). Then last year he picks his game up a bit. Big deal. Lance couldn’t climb for toffee before his cancer, but he trained and trained and became a superb climber. Surely Rasmussen is capable of improving his time trialling in a year without recourse to drugs?

I dunno. There’s so much finger pointing these days, and so much “guilty until proven innocent” in cycling. Am I missing something here, or is Rasmussen being penalised with a two year ban without actually being found guilty of using drugs?