"We were all riding the same" - Michael Rasmussen holds no grudge after being thrown out of 2007 Tour de France where Alberto Contador took the victory

The 2007 Tour de France was won by Alberto Contador. The cyclist from Pinta won his first Grand Tour. After stage 16, finishing on the Aubisque, the then leader of the race Michael Rasmussen, who had had several mythical battles with Contador, was expelled.

The then Rabobank rider (now Jumbo-Visma) did not test positive in any control, but he had skipped a few and the decision had to be taken to send him out of the race through the back door. Contador, second up to that point, took the lead of the race until Paris.

The Dane, in an interview with El Pais a few years ago now rescued by the folks at Diario del Triatlón, recalled what happened when he was pulled out of the race:

"When we arrived at our hotel in Pau, the Mercure, there were so many journalists and so much expectation that De Rooy forced me out of the kitchen door and into an unmarked Rabobank car and took me to a small hotel in a lost village. There I almost didn't make it through the night. Everyone, the team management, the bank management, knew what needed to be done to win the Tour. They were not naïve. They knew what I had done, and how to do it."

Years later the Dane admitted that he had doped, but wanted to make it clear that he was not the only one who did it and insinuates that his rival in that Tour de France, Alberto Contador, was also doping:

"That Tour I was the strongest but the winner was Contador. We were all riding the same, cycling was like that, but I have nothing against Alberto or any cyclist, only against the hypocrisy of the puritans".