Mark Cavendish of Britain won a second stage of the Tour de France yesterday, using his superior speed to cut through the field and take a sprint finish in the rain.
Cavendish's Team Columbia teammate, Gerald Ciolek, was second, while their team leader Kim Kirchen of Luxembourg retained the yellow jersey as overall leader of the race that was shaken a day earlier by a positive doping test for Liquigas rider Manuel Beltran.
Cavendish and Ciolek came in ahead of Jimmy Casper of France in yesterday's eighth stage, a 172.5-kilometer ride from Figeac to the city of Toulouse.
"To finish with a one-two and have Kim in yellow, you can't do better than that," Cavendish said. "When I'm there in the sprint and fired up, normally I can win."
It was the last chance for the sprinters for a while as the riders enter the high mountains of the Pyrenees today.
Four cyclists - Laurent Lefevre, Jerome Pineau and Christophe Riblon of France and Amets Txurruka of Spain - broke away in the first hour of the race and at one point had a lead of five minutes, but they were chased down by the teams of the sprinters and the last two were caught with three kilometers to go.
Beltran's case has thrown a pall over the race, which was seeking to recover from a doping-marred event last year and 10 years since a series of drug scandals on the Tour destroyed cycling's reputation.
"When are these idiots going to learn that it's over?" said Pat McQuaid, head of the International Cycling Union. "They continue to think that they can beat the system. They're wrong. The system is catching up all the time."
Beltran was immediately suspended by his Liquigas team after the news of his positive test broke on Friday evening. However, the rest of the team raced yesterday. Last year, a positive test for Cofidis' Cristian Moreni led the entire team to withdraw.
Beltran was released at 12:30am yesterday after being questioned for about two hours, a police official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. The official added that Beltran was fully cooperative and denied any wrong.
The Liquigas team bus arrived at the start of yesterday's eighth stage with a police escort of at least 14 motorcycles.
Liquigas spokesman Paolo Barbieri told reporters that the team doctor had known nothing about the EPO and any decision to use it had been taken purely by the rider.
Last year, pre-race favorite Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan tested positive for blood doping and race leader Michael Rasmussen was kicked out just days before the end of the race for having lied about his whereabouts when he missed pre-competition doping tests. Iban Mayo of Spain also tested positive for EPO and was later cleared by his national federation, but the case is still being contested by the International Cycling Union.
In the 2006 Tour, American winner Floyd Landis tested positive for synthetic testosterone after a spectacular comeback ride and was later stripped of his title after a long court battle.
(Agencies via Shanghai Daily July 13, 2008)