Tour de France leader, the Dane Michael Rasmussen quit the competition after his team, Rabobank, decided to pull him out.

Earlier today Rasmussen won the stage 16 of Tour de France and he was the potential winner of the competition, which ends Sunday in Paris.

But few days ago, Rasmussen was kicked off the Danish national cycling team for having missed two out-of-competition doping tests earlier in the year.

"He broke team rules. It is not certain if the team will continue in the race," a spokesman for Rabobank said.

The team has learnt that Rasmussen lied to them over where and what he was up to during the month of June when he was in fact in Italy and not in Mexico as he had told them.

"Michael Rasmussen never should have started the Tour," Patrice Clerc, head of the Amaury Sport Organization, which runs the Tour, said on Tuesday. "The champion must be unimpeachable. An example."

Astana team announced yesterday its drop out from the Tour de France after their rider Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.

According to the media, the analysis of the French anti-doping laboratory at Chatenay-Malabry revealed that Vinokourov underwent a blood transfusion shortly before the start of the stage.

Today another doping scandal emerged as the Italian Christian Moreni tested positive for synthetic testosterone.