Doping cloud now follows race leader Rasmussen

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CASTRES, France -- The staging area for Friday's start was in Montpellier's Pavilion Populaire, a spacious, marble-tiled commons shaded by century-old trees, between which were strung colored lights that make every night a festival. Nearby, a glittering carousel. As the gleaming, brightly colored team buses pulled into the Pavilion before today's start, it occurred to me again that the Tour must be most aesthetically pleasing event in all of sport.

Yet it is perversely unable to not present an ugly face to the world. Once again, doping is the lead story at world's toughest bike race.

As the Rabobank bus heaved into view, I joined a mob of journos streaming toward it. (As we pressed in on it, I was reminded that sportswriters never have been renowned for their comprehensive hygiene. It doesn't help that many of this bunch has been on the road for two weeks.)

The door opened a crack: Jacob Bergsma, the team's media liaison, stepped out. "Michael will come out and make a statement in five minutes," he announced. "Please give him a little space. We don't want to scrape him off the bus."

It was a pretty good line -- Michael Rasmussen is so skinny that it was easy to imagine him stuck like a refrigerator magnet to the bus -- but no one laughed. Blood was in the air. Rasmussen, currently the race leader, had been thrown off his own national team by the Danish Cycling Union. The DCU accused Rasmussen of failing to keep them posted about his whereabouts when training away from home.

The decision -- made on June 26 -- means that Rasmussen will not ride in next September's world championships in Stuttgart and possibly next year's Beijing Olympics. When he stepped off the bus, he explained that it was all an "administrative error." He'd informed the authorities of his whereabouts, but the letter had been delayed in the post. The DCU's "database" was not "updated" in a timely fashion, explained the 33-year-old ex-mountain biker, who dismissed the contretemps as "a minor deal."

It seemed so a few hours later, when VeloNews broke a bombshell story, in which a former amateur mountain-bike racer named Whitney Richards alleged Rasmussen tried to deceive him into transporting illegal doping products to Europe five years ago. An excerpt of that piece:

"Whitney Richards, 31, a one-time Colorado-based cross-country racer, told VeloNews that in March of 2002, Rasmussen asked him to transport a box containing cycling shoes. But the shoebox, according to Richards, actually contained bags of an American-made human blood substitute. None of the information Richards provided VeloNews involves allegations of current doping.

Asked by VeloNews about the charges at a post-race press conference following the Tour's 12th stage on Friday, Rasmussen said he was familiar with Richards' name but declined to comment further on the allegations."