Closing the door on an exciting, if not anonymous, Tour

Carlos Sastre clinched his first grand Tour win after taking the lead on the Alpe d'Huez. AP Austin Murphy's Mailbag Austin Murphy will answer questions from SI.com users. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

Okay, withdrawal time. A dramatic, transformative Tour de France has been decided by one of the narrowest margins in the 105-year history of the race. Cycling fans who've been following the Tour for the last three weeks must now grapple with a void in their lives, a Bobke-less universe.

Kudos to Carlos Sastre, the 33-year-old Spaniard who attacked with such panache on the Alpe d'Huez last Wednesday, relieving teammate Frank Schleck of the yellow jersey, then upended conventional wisdom three days later to clinch his first-ever grand tour. Sastre did this by holding off Australia's Cadel Evans in Saturday's 53km time trial. A climbing specialist accustomed to hemorrhaging time in the Race of Truth, Sastre had reportedly been working with aerodynamics specialists from Ferrari's Formula One team. Evans, for his part, had been deep-frying his legs, countering multiple attacks in the Alps without the assistance of his Silence-Lotto teammates, who essentially didn't show in the high mountains. (Paging Yaroslav Popovych ...) Evans went into the final TT trailing Sastre by 1:34. Despite his reputation as a far superior time trialist, the Aussie was only able to pull back 29 seconds, thus settling for second for the second-straight year.

Still, what a difference a year made. Sorry to keep beating this bongo, but, to me, the most important aspect of Sastre's win was that he rode for one of the three teams in the race willing to spend a small fortune on independent, third-party drug testing. (The other two, as I believe I have mentioned in every single post on this year's Tour, are the American squads Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle). The significance of this, after the bottom-scraping humiliations of the '07 Tour, is tough to overstate, although I think you'll agree I've been giving it my best shot.

I wrote on the eve of this Tour that "with 180 coreurs taking the start in Brest, there are bound to be a few cheats. But their day seems to be passing."

And so there were. The fourth rider to get the thumb was a Kazakh named Dmitri Fofonev, whose name it was fun to hear Phil Liggett pronounce, and in whose blood was found traces of Heptaminol, which dilates the blood vessels. Dmitri 'fessed right up, and will now take a two-year sabbatical from a sport that is, in fits and starts, getting better.

Time to hand out a few superlatives as we look back at this year's Tour.

Most encouraging sign: The parity and lack of daylight between the main threats to the general classification. Once the ethically challenged members of Saunier-Duval exited the race, no one rider was dramatically better than the rest. Guys were suffering deeply, getting spit out the back, missing the time cut. The racing was human, not superhuman -- a very good sign.

Most karmically satisfying moment: Stefan Schumacher clips the rear wheel of Kim Kirchen within sight of the finish line on the climb to Super-Besse. The German bites the dust, loses half a minute and the yellow jersey -- to Kirchen, of Team Columbia.

Serious cycling fans recall how, two years ago, Schumacher won the Tour of Benelux after hooking George Hincapie's handlebars in the closing meters of the final stage. Hincapie, who'd been in the lead, crashed, and Schumacher was given the overall win. His whining protests after Stage 6 ("It's not fair!") earned him little sympathy.

Most jaw-dropping performance: Columbia's 23-year-old Mark Cavendish sprinted his way to four stage wins before dropping out of the race with a week to go, baked by the Alps. "He's still a kid, you know," team owner Bob Stapleton told SI via phone. "He doesn't have the endurance range he needs to develop over the next few years. But he's a hell of a rider."

While Cavendish is not a guy with "particularly great physiological test results," says Stapleton, he does have, in addition to his warp speed, "a real tactical instinct that you just don't normally see in young riders. He's at the stage tactically at 23 where an Eric Zabel or Mario Cipollini were in their late 20s.