Michael Morkov keeping the Tour de France hopes alive for Team Saxo-Bank Tinkoff
Michael Morkov is one man who brought the only good news for Team Saxo Bank-Tinkoff at the Tour de France.
The cyclist currently leads the mountain’s classifications of the race with as many as 9 points to his credit and his position is in no threat as of now.
Ivan Basso of Team Liquigas-Cannondale is at the second position and he is 7 points behind the Dane.
Peter Sagan of Team Liquigas-Cannondale, Anthony Delaplace of Team Saur-Sojasun and David Moncoutie of Team Cofidis occupied the third, the fourth and the fifth position respectively.
Team Saxo Bank has signed a new deal with Tinkoff Bank and the squad is now known as Team Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank.
The new sponsor is happy with Morkov’s performance but the firm have asked the team to do more at the ongoing race.
The Russian cyclist and businessman urged the team to improve its performance during the coming stages as reported by sporten.dk.
“So far so good. There are 22 teams and there are few jerseys to be awarded”.
“We have one of them, and it is an important jersey. It is one of my favourites, I like it better than the green, though I myself was a sprinter”.
“We get on the podium each day and get exposure in the media, it's not a bad start. But it is nothing more than what I expected. I am a businessman, I know what I do”.
“Of course I appreciate the mountain jersey, but I expect a stage win - or two”.
The Danish team is having a disastrous season after the Court of Arbitration for Sport suspended its star rider, Alberto Contador for a period of two year.
The jury was convinced that Alberto used clenbuterol to enhance his performance and has also been stripped-off form all his wins since the Tour de France 2010.
Exit of Contador also raised suspicions towards the team’s World Tour status as almost 70% of the total points earned by the team came through the strong legs of the Spaniard.
However, Team’s General Manager Bjarne Riis held on to his nerves and found a new sponsor in shape of Tinkoff-Bank.
Tinkoff Bank appreciated Michael’s performance at the Tour de France and tweeted that the cyclists performance shall be appreciated and announced a polka-dot credit card for the cyclist.
Tags: