Rasmussen retracts doping allegations against Freire, Flecha

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The fallout from Michael Rasmussen's tell all auto-biography and his subsequent media appointments continues with the Dane backtracking in his allegations against Oscar Freire and Juan-Antonia Flecha. Rasmussen originally implied that both of his former teammates had doped, but he carefully re-worded his statement after Freire threatened legal action.

"There was organized doping, but it did not include all the riders," he told EFE. "Not once in my life did I see Oscar Freire doping. Flecha as well, he also didn't know anything."

Rasmussen aired many of his assertions on Danish broadcaster DR on Sunday night, following this he participated in an online chat on dr.dk where one of the questions put to him related to the percentage of riders he thought to be doping during the 2007 Tour.

"Within the Rabobank team: 100% [used doping products]. Not everyone took the same products, but all riders were on some form of doping provided by the team. I would not want to guess at, the proportion of the total field that was doped," Rasmussen answered.

Such wording implied the entire Rabobank team of Dennis Menchov, Michael Boogerd, Bram de Groot, Thomas Dekker, Juan Antonio Flecha, Oscar Freire, Grischa Niermann and Pieter Weening had all used banned substances, although Rasmussen did not specify names or whether he had witnessed their supposed doping.

One of the riders cast under aspersion, Pieter Weening (Orica-GreenEdge), is yet to comment publicly regarding Rasmussen's allegations, although Orica-GreenEdge has released their own statement asking for Weening to confirm the anti-doping declaration he has already signed.