Spaniard Alberto Contador won the drug-tainted Tour de France in Paris on Sunday when he held on to his 23-second overnight lead on Australia’s Cadel Evans to secure the race’s fabled yellow jersey.
Contador, who rides for the Discovery Channel team, becomes the first Spaniard to win the three-week race since Miguel Indurain, the first-ever five-time consecutive winner, from 1991 to 1995.
The 24-year-old from Madrid virtually secured his first-ever yellow jersey in only his second ride in the race after a fifth-place finish in the penultimate-stage time trial in Angouleme on Saturday.
He finished 2:18 behind American teammate Levi Leipheimer after the 55,5km race against the clock, but was forced to dig deep to prevent the ever-present Evans from causing a major upset.
The 30-year-old Australian started the 19th stage with a deficit of 1:50 on Contador but kept the Spaniard on his toes by finishing just 51 seconds behind Leipheimer to close the gap significantly.
”With 4km to go, they told me Evans was 35 seconds behind me. I had to fight to the death to keep the jersey,” said Contador.
In the end, Contador held on to his lead after Sunday’s final stage, not usually contended by the yellow-jersey rivals, finished in a bunch sprint that was dominated by Italian Daniele Bennati of the Lampre team.
Evans thus becomes Australia’s highest finisher to date in the race, having equalled compatriot Phil Anderson’s achievement of a fifth-place finish last year. Once again showing his talents in the mountains and the time trials, he has promised he will be back to do even better.
”I think I have a pretty good idea how to ride this Tour now,” said Evans, who nonetheless lamented the lack of fight shown by some teams on the 15th stage that left him unable to follow Contador and Denmark’s Michael Rasmussen.
”I don’t know everything, but that [15th stage] to me was where I lost the Tour de France. I debuted in eighth, then I came fifth and now second. I’ve got a good five or six years of Tour riding in front of me, I think.”
Like Contador and Evans, American Levi Leipheimer achieved a career best to finish third overall at 31 seconds, well ahead of fourth-placed Spaniard Carlos Sastre, of CSC, at 7:08.
It is the second-smallest winning margin in the history of the race, following Greg Lemond’s eight-second victory over France’s Laurent Fignon after a final-day time trial in Paris in 1989.
Contador’s victory, and indeed the entire 94th edition of the race, will, however, be tinged with controversy. And there are many who will claim the race was distorted by the mere inclusion, and subsequent exclusion, of Rasmussen.
Denmark’s former two-time winner of the polka-dot jersey had saddled up looking for a stage win or two, and to perhaps be crowned king of the mountains for a third consecutive time. To everyone’s surprise, he became a potential — though unlikely — Tour champion before ending his campaign as the race’s biggest villain.
But following a week of speculation that Rasmussen had been doping — due to revelations that he had missed four random doping tests in two years — more concrete evidence of cheating distracted the spotlight from the Dane.
On the second rest day, it was announced that pre-race favourite Alexandre Vinokourov — who had crumbled in the yellow-jersey battle but won two stages in spectacular style — had tested positive for homologous blood doping.
That meant he had used the red blood cells from a compatible donor to boost his performance prior to his time-trial victory on stage 13, a result that was confirmed on Saturday following the analysis of a B sample. Vinokourov and his Astana team exited the race, and then the French team Cofidis were forced out after Italian Cristian Moreni tested positive for testosterone.
It was earlier that day that Rasmussen had burst ahead of Leipheimer and Contador to beat the Spaniard on the tough 16th stage to the Col d’Aubisque. But the drama was far from over.
Hours later, Contador — who was 3:10 behind the Dane after the final day of climbing in the Pyrenees — found out he would soon take over possession of the yellow jersey when the Dane’s Rabobank team finally decided to throw him out.
”I was surprised when I heard the news [on Rasmussen],” said Contador. ”When a rider crashes you can pick up the yellow jersey, so I’m looking at the situation a bit like that.”
Rabobank finally sacked Rasmussen after discovering he had lied to them over his whereabouts in June.
For Evans and many other riders, it could all have been so different. But the Australian refused to reflect on what his chances would have been like if Rasmussen, in keeping with the race’s code of ethics on suspected cheats, had not raced from the beginning. — Sapa-AFP