After meeting with Rasmussen and personal sponsor, Riis says: “We will see what happens.”
While the likelihood of Michael Rasmussen racing the upcoming Vuelta with Bjarne Riis’s Saxo Bank team looks nonexistent, the chances of the two-time polka dot jersey winner at the Tour de France signing for Riis’s Saxo Bank/SunGard team for 2011 still look, well, possible.
Rasmussen and his personal sponsor, Christina Hembo, met with Riis at the Post Danmark Rundt following the race’s queen stage in Vejle. Hembo, the Danish designer behind Christina Design watches, has backed the blacklisted climber in hopes of giving the Danish climbing sensation a shot at returning to the highest level, has offered to pay Rasmussen’s salary for the next half year, but after that, the hope is that Rasmussen will be racing for a ProTour team, hopefully, Riis’s.
After the meeting, Hembo spoke sparingly with the Ekstra Bladet: “I can confirm that we had a meeting with Bjarne Riis. He was very attentive, but we reached no conclusion at the meeting. Now, we await further information from him.”
The 1996 Tour de France winner was just as tight lipped, perhaps even more so: “Now, we will see what happens.”
This was a definite step forward for the 36 year old who hopes to find his way back to the ProTour, as it was only a few days ago that Riis noted he hadn’t even spoken with Rasmussen yet. At that point, rumors indicated that Rasmussen might be a late addition to the Saxo Bank team for the Vuelta. Unsurprisingly, Riis countered quickly and assured that it wasn’t nearly as far along as it was being presented in the media: “It doesn’t mean he should be on my cycling team. I have just said that it was something I would look at and there was probably nothing odious about it. That does not mean that he should ride the Vuelta and everything for us, or that he absolutely must ride for us.”
At this point, the tale is pure conjecture, but it’s an interesting one, especially considering the exodus of Danish talent leaving Saxo Bank heading into next season, namely the two top Danes on Riis’s team, Fuglsang and Breschel.