Pau, France -- Shaken to its core and its future in doubt, the Tour de France was beginning its final swing toward the finish in Paris -- stripped of its race leader, unceremoniously sent home under a cloud of doping suspicion.
Sunday's victory ride through the heart of Paris likely will be unforgettable -- for all the wrong reasons.
Michael Rasmussen had seemed certain to win. Now, the winner's yellow jersey will rest on someone else's shoulders. The last four days of racing starting Thursday will decide whose.
But will anyone care?
Some French newspapers declared the Tour dead Thursday and said it should be stopped after the bombshell announcement late Wednesday night that Rasmussen's team was sending the Dane home for lying.
Team spokesman Jacob Bergsma said Rasmussen's withdrawal was ordered by their sponsor, Rabobank. It was linked to "incorrect" information that Rasmussen gave to the team's sports director over his whereabouts last month. Rasmussen missed random drug tests on May 8 and June 28, saying he was in Mexico. But a former rider, Davide Cassani, said he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June.
The remaining members of the team will still take the start on Thursday, Bergsma said.
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| 'Of course I'm clean,' Michael Rasmussen says. 'I've been tested 17 times now in less than two weeks.' (Getty Images) |
"My career is ruined," he told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.
"I have no idea what I should do or where I will go," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "This is an enormous blow for me, and also for all the guys from the Rabo team. They're devastated."
Only once before in the 104-year-old Tour has the race leader been expelled. In 1978, Belgian rider Michel Pollentier, trying to evade doping controls after winning a stage at the Alpe d'Huez in the Alps, was caught with an intricate tube-and-container system that contained urine that was not his, said Tour historian Jean-Paul Brouchon.
With Rasmussen out, Spanish rider Alberto Contador of the Discovery Channel moves into the race lead. Australian Cadel Evans, who rides for Predictor-Lotto, moves up to second, with U.S. rider Levi Leipheimer, also with Discovery, now third.
Thursday's stage 17 over 117 miles from Pau to Castelsarrasin was taking the Tour away from the Pyrenees and north in the direction of Paris.
