An appeal court in Arnhem has ordered Michael Rasmussen to repay most of the 665,000 euros he had previously been awarded in damages in his case against former employer Rabobank. The Dane now has three months to determine if he will take the case to the Dutch supreme court.

A long-drawn legal battle has come to a preliminary end today as an appeal court in Arnhem has ruled on Michael Rasmussen's case against his former employer Rabobank for wrongful dismissal. The ruling finds in favour of the Dutch cycling team, ordering Rasmussen to repay most of the damages he had been awarded in an earlier ruling.

The Dane had taken the yellow jersey early in the 2007 Tour de France while riding for the Dutch team and appeared to have sewn up the overall win with a stage win atop the Col d'Aubisque when his team decided to withdraw him from the race that same evening. Former Italian professional, Davide Cassani, had seen Rasmussen on a training ride in Italy at a time where he had claimed to be in Mexico and so the Dane had broken the whereabouts rules.

Rabobank claimed not to have known anything about Rasmussen's lies while the Dane was adamant that his team had been fully informed. Thus he sued his former employer for wrongful dismissal and was awarded 665,000 euros in damages in 2008 when an Utrecht court ruled that there had not been sufficient ground to sack the rider.

Both Rabobank and Rasmussen appealed the ruling, the Dane seeking to obtain 5,6 million euros in damages. Today's ruling finds in favour of Rabobank and Rasmussen will now have to repay most of his earlier gains.

“It is disappointing to say the least,” Rasmussen’s lawyer Andrú Brantjes told De Telegraaf. “I have been talking all morning with Michael, he is completely broken. We did not expect this. It is incredible and incomprehensible.”

In between the two rulings, Rasmussen has confessed to doping, admitting to having taken EPO, growth hormone, testosterone, insulin, DHEA, IGF-1 and cortisone and undergone blood transfusions at different times between 1998 and 2010. However, the ruling underlines that this has had no influence on the ruling which only deals with the rightfulness of his dismissal.

Rasmussen served a two-year suspension for his doping offence and returned to racing in 2009 but no top level team wanted to hire him. Instead, he raced for different continental teams until he announced his retirement at the time of his doping confession.

Rasmussen has three months to determine whether he will take the case to the Dutch supreme court.