The clean repuation of the Dutch banking team was severely tested last year. 2007 was not the year of the phenomenal victory in Milan-San Remo of Oscar Freire or the first real Vuelta victory of Denis Menchov, but the year of Michael Rasmussen. In a period of poor leadership, strong emotions and a cheating man in the yellow jersey, everything went wrong.


The change in the team this winter was not so much the new riders, but mostly the structure of the team. Theo de Rooij, not famous for his abilities as a team leader to begin with, quit and was replaced by Henri van der Aat at first (inte...