July 29, 2007	Sunday	Rajab 13, 1428

COGNAC (France), July 28: Tour de France organisers on Saturday called for the resignation of International Cycling Union (UCI) bosses who they feel are to blame for the Michael Rasmussen controversy which has sullied the race.

“There's only one solution (in such circumstances), and that's resignation,” said Patrice Clerc, the president of the race's parent company Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) ahead of the 19th and penultimate stage.

Clerc said there has been a “lack of clarity, transparency, competence, and most of all a lack of professionnalism” on the part of the higher echelons of cycling's world ruling body.

The Tour will end on Sunday in Paris, but for most watchers the 94th edition will be remembered for being dominated by the skinny Danish climber who wore the emblematic yellow jersey for over a week before being thrown out.

The Dutch Rabobank outfit ejected Rasmussen, and then sacked him the next day, after discovering he had lied to them over his whereabouts in June.

Up until then, Rasmussen's whereabouts had preoccupied most of the world's media – and caused a dipute between the already feuding Tour bosses and the UCI.

It was revealed he had missed four random doping controls in the past 18 months, a fact the UCI and his Rabobank team were aware of but decided not to act upon because, in legal terms, he could not be sanctioned.

The affair was compounded by two positive doping cases involving Alexandre Vinkourov for blood doping and Cristian Moreni for testosterone, leading respectively to the ejection of the Astana and Cofidis teams.

But the Rasmussen case appears to have left the bitterest taste with the race organisers, who went as far as to claim that the UCI had deliberately tried to harm the Tour's image.

“There are two possibilities: either they (UCI) have been incompetent, or they have gone out of their way to damage (the Tour's reputation),” added Tour de France director Christian Pruhomme.

In May 2006 Prudhomme signed a three-way agreement with UCI president Pat McQuaid and Quick Step team manager Patrick Lefevere, who is also head of the professional teams association, outlining all three parties' commitment to a scandal-free Tour.

Prudhomme feels that the UCI, in not releasing the information on Rasmussen's missed tests, effectively broke that agreement.

Prudhomme added: “I've been betrayed.”—AFP