Belgian track star will ride with the team until the end of the year, and hopes to sign for longer after ban is overturned
Having been given the good news that he is cleared to race in this month’s Six-days of Gent, Belgium, Iljo Keisse has now been told that he is welcome back into the Quick Step team. Having missed most of the 2010 season through his on-again-off-again suspension after returning a positive test for both cathine and hydrochlorothiazide (HCT) after his victory in the 2008 Gent Six-Days, Keisse will ride in the team’s colours until the end of the year.
“When I told [Quick Step team manager] Patrick Lefevere the good news about the Six-Day, he told me the good news that my period of inactivity was over,” said Keisse to Sporza. “Until the end of the year I will ride for Quick Step.”
Having been inactive since July, when he was pulled out of the Österreich-Rundfahrt after the Court for Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld his ban after an appeal from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Keisse is keen to stay on at the team; he is also keen to restart his career on the road.
“I hope that I can stay on afterwards,” he said, “but we [Keisse and the team] will have to sit down again to discuss that more. I would also like to ride more on the roads, because that’s what never really happened this season.”
The 27-year-old Gent native has yet to translate his class on the track to the road, although he was given very little chance to do so this year. His outstanding result to date though, which points at his potential, was third place in the 2007 Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne race as a Chocolade Jacques-Topsport Vlaandern rider, behind current teammate Tom Boonen.