Riis critical of Rabobank's handling of the Rasmussen case

Bjarne Riis has questioned the decision of the Rabobank team to send the Dane Michael Rasmussen home during this years Tour de France, according to an interview with the Danish newspaper B.T. The CSC team manager believes that the case regards the team's trust of the rider.

"I think that Rabobank has some things to clarify," Riis told the paper. "If you select a rider for the Tour, you have trust in him. There is no sense in suddenly, half way through the race to question that. The team should have just left him at home in the first place if the warnings that he received about the missed doping controls were so serious," he explained.

Rasmussen was fired four days before the end of the Tour by Rabobank. He apparently lied to the team about his whereabouts in the weeks leading up to the Tour. Currently, there is an on-going investigation, by the bank surrounding the exclusion of the Dane.

Riis is extremely active in the fight against doping with his team, CSC. During his own career, however, Riis had a different view on doping. In May this year, he admitted to using the banned substance EPO on his way to winning the 1996 Tour de France.