Team Saxo Bank boss, Bjarne Riis, has spoken out in support of Alberto Contador following the award of a backdated two-year doping ban for the Spaniard.

Riis, owner of the Riis Cycling company that operates and manages the Danish-registered WorldTour team, claimed that yesterday’s ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) did not prove his star rider, whose future with the team is now uncertain, had intentionally cheated.

In a statement, Riis highlighted the CAS panel’s ruling that ingestion of a contaminated food supplement was the likely cause of the Spaniard’s positive test for clenbuterol on the second rest day of the 2010 Tour De France.

“After having the time to study the ruling we continue to support Alberto Contador based on the CAS verdict. We can only respect the ruling, and this means that Alberto Contador now has to serve a ban. But the conclusion of the ruling is vital for the team, as the ruling focuses on the likely cause being ingestion of a contaminated supplement and at the same time states that this is unlikely to have been a case of conscious cheating,” he said.

Contador maintained his innocence throughout the drawn out legal process, arguing that the minute 50 pictogram sample of clenbuterol, an anabolic agent able to promote the development of lean muscle, had entered his system from a contaminated steak brought from Spain to  the 2010 Tour.

CAS formally rejected Contador’s defence yesterday, but declared the UCI and WADA’s partial assertion that his blood may have been contaminated as the result of a transfusion as “equally unlikely”. Instead, the CAS panel upheld another of the UCI and WADA’s assertions that Contador’s blood had been contaminated by the ingestion of a contaminated food supplement.

The Associated Press reported today (Feb 7) that Contador had vowed to continue the fight to prove his innocence. The CAS panel accepted that the contaminated sample could not have enhanced Contador’s performance and recorded that the Spaniard had passed all of about 20 tests taken since returning to competition on January 25 2011.

Contador has been stripped of his victories in the 2010 Tour De France and the 2011 Giro D’Italia. His other Grand Tour victories – the 2007 and 2009 Tours De France, and the 2008 Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana – remain. He will now await the outcome of a separate CAS hearing of a case brought by the UCI to fine him nearly 2.5 million Euros.

Riis stressed that his  team had inherited the case (Contador was racing for Astana when he registered the positive test) and said he was glad it had been concluded. “We have asked ourselves many times during this case, could we as a team have done things any differently?” he said.

“I really don’t think we could have done things differently than what we have done trying to support every one of our riders. We inherited this case, and patiently we had to wait for a final decision. All along, we have diligently acted in accordance with the rules.”