JAN OLSEN Michael Rasmussen says he has never used performance-enhancing drugs, and won't rule out competing in next year's Tour de France.

JAN OLSEN

Michael Rasmussen says he has never used performance-enhancing drugs, and won't rule out competing in next year's Tour de France.

Rasmussen, who held the yellow jersey before being kicked out by his own team under a cloud of doping suspicions, says he has always raced clean.

"I have never used doping," said the 33-year-old Dane. "But it is as if the yellow jersey is easiest to shoot at."

Speaking from his home in Italy, he lashed out at the media, saying some journalists automatically assume the Tour leader must be cheating.

"There is perhaps an expectation that the yellow jersey is doped," he said.

Rasmussen was expelled by the Rabobank team just hours after he won Wednesday's stage for allegedly lying about his whereabouts before the Tour. He had missed random drug tests on May 8 and June 28, saying he was in Mexico. But a former rider, Davide Cassani, said he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June.

Rasmussen again criticized his team's decision, calling it "a very violent reaction," but he did not address his whereabouts in the lead-up to the Tour. He added that his dismissal from the race will haunt him for the rest of his life.

"Every day I'm going to wake up and think about not being allowed to win the Tour de France - the race that defines me as a cyclist," he said. "I will never get over it. ... I believe it equals getting a Picasso painting stolen. I was working on the greatest piece I could achieve and it was taken away from me."

Despite his forced exit, he said he was ready to race cycling's premier event again next year. "If the chance to ride the Tour de France in 2008 pops up, I will definitely line up," he confirmed.

Meanwhile, Alexander Vinokourov, who left the Tour after a positive test for blood doping, has questioned the competence of the French laboratory (LNDD) that tested him.

It was revealed in Saturday's L'Equipe that Vinokourov's B sample had also tested positive. The Kazakh now faces a two-year ban from cycling and, according to the anti-doping charter of the sport's governing body UCI, he will have to pay a fine equal to a year's salary.

Neither the Tour organisers, the UCI, the French Anti- Doping Agency or the Astana team have confirmed that information.

"I have always raced clean", Vinokourov said in a statement released by his lawyers on Saturday.

"Never before this year's Tour de France have I ever been accused of violating any doping law."

"These test results simply make no sense. Given all the attention paid to doping offences, you would have to be crazy to do what I have been accused of, and I am not crazy."

Vinokourov tested positive for homologuous blood doping, a method using blood from another person that has been detected since 2004.

The statement questioned the efficacy of the "flow cytometry instrument" that the LNDD used to find him positive and which the laboratory was using for the first time on this year's Tour.

"As of now, the public has only heard one side in these test results. We encourage everyone to keep an open mind about the test results and not to assume that the LNDD has done everything correctly or has achieved accurate results," said Vinokourov's lawyer Maurice Suh.

Vinokourov, who was sacked by his Astana team, was tested following his win in last Saturday's time trial in Albi.