Yellow jersey holder Michael Rasmussen has been kicked out of the race by his Rabobank team, who could yet pull out of the tour themselves.

Rasmussen won Wednesday's Stage16 to extend his overall lead to more than three minutes.

But he was then dramatically sacked by Rabobank after they learnt he lied about his whereabouts while training. He'd already been in trouble for missing out of competition drugs tests.

And the teams sponsors insisted he should be axed after it emerged he was in Italy during the month of June and not Mexico as he'd said.

By default Spaniard Alberto Contador is now in the yellow jersey almost two minutes ahead of Australia's Cadel Evans with four stages to go.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Cofidis rider Christian Moreni was booted off the Tour along with his team after he failed a drugs test. He had excessive levels of testosterone.

All this less than a day after pre-race favourite Alexander Vinokourov failed a dope test and was thrown out of the race.