MILAN, Italy — Michael Rasmussen is in talks with an Italian cycling team, about a month after he was ousted from the Tour de France.
Rasmussen met for 30 minutes Wednesday with Acqua & Sapone team director Palmiro Masciarelli.
"He wants to finish the season with us," Masciarelli told The Associated Press on Thursday. "He showed me all his papers. The problem is with the Danish federation."
Rasmussen, a 33-year-old Dane, was kicked out of this year's Tour — while leading the race — by his Dutch team Rabobank for allegedly lying about his whereabouts to evade doping tests. Rasmussen has denied those accusations.
"I'm the victim of a great injustice, and my lawyers are working to take care of me," Rasmussen was quoted as saying in Thursday's Gazzetta dello Sport. "My goal is to find a team, because I would like to have a great Giro di Lombardia."
The Giro di Lombardia, the final single-day classic of the cycling season, is scheduled for Oct. 20.
Rasmussen missed two tests, and Masciarelli indicated that he shouldn't have been penalized until he missed a third.
"I don't think kicking him out of the Tour was the right thing to do," said Masciarelli, who added the team could make a decision by Monday or Tuesday. "The confusion surrounding this case is enormous."
Doping allegations and suspicions devastated the 2007 Tour. Three riders, including Rasmussen, and two teams were expelled during the three-week race.
On Thursday, seven European cycling federations met in Somma Lombardo, Italy, to discuss the dire state of the sport and ways to combat doping.
The federations — Austria, Belgium, France, Britain, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain — did not present any specific reforms but gathered ideas to present at the upcoming International Cycling Union congress in September.
"We want to accentuate the fact that the biggest problem affronting the sport is doping," the federations said in a joint statement. "We support the UCI and the institutions in their efforts, and we hope that the anti-doping rules are applied with the maximum rigor.
"We're asking the teams and all the national federations to reinforce their efforts to battle this problem."