Michael Morkov will fill in for Alex Rasmussen and Matti Breschel at World Championships
Michael Morkov was named to represent Denmark at the World Championships, only in time trials initially but with Alex Rasmussen missing the event, Morkov will ride at the road race event.
Alex has been dropped from the Danish team following doping allegations. Morkov has missed the chance to practice on the World Championships track as he was riding at the GP lsbergues in France.
Rasmussen will miss the chance to ride the World Championships at his home turf and his team HTC-Highroad has already terminated the rider because he has missed three doping test and has failed to comply with the team’s code of conduct. He was in the Danish
squad but will not participate in the event and the final decision on his case will be announced later on. Highroad manager Rolf Aldag mentioned in a team’s statement as he said, “Mr. Rasmussen missed a test and additionally did not inform the team."
Alex Rasmussen rode at the Giro‘d Italia and also won the Philadelphia International Championship held in June 2011 and his loss is a real big blow to the team. He has signed with team Garmin-Cervelo for the coming season as team HTC has announced their
demise as they have failed to find a sponsor for the coming season.
Morkov is glad to take on the responsibility as he mentioned that he always wanted to represent his nation at the time trials especially since he has won the Bronze medal at the Danish Championships. He told Feltet.dk, “I must honestly say that both Alex
and Jakob have done better with it at the highest international level, so I had actually written it off and did not work specifically for it.”
Danish team has lost two key players as Matti Breschel has also missed his chances to perform in front of the home crowd as he broke his fingers while riding at the Vuelta a Espana 2011. Michael shared his disappointment on hearing about Rasmussen as he
said, “I would not really say I am shocked, but I am extremely annoyed.” It will be interesting to see how Morkov performs at the World Championships as he has a big responsibility on his shoulders.
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