Overall race leader Michael Rasmussen won the 16th stage of the Tour de France, a 218.5-km ride from Orthez on Wednesday.
The Danish Rabobank rider beat Discovery Channel's Levi Leipheimer of the United States to retain the yellow jersey. Spaniard Alberto Contador, also of the Discovery channel team, came home third.
The start of the stage was delayed by 10 minutes after riders from the six French and two German teams protested against doping in the sport, one day after it was announced Alexander Vinokourov has tested positive for blood-doping.
Small blasts
Earlier, at least one small explosion hit race after a report of a bomb threat from a caller claiming to represent Basque separatist rebels ETA, the government said.
No one was hurt and the Tour, the most important race on the cycling calendar, continued after the explosion. The caller told a highway authority that ETA had planted several bombs along the route of the Tour de France through the Spanish region of Navarre, newspaper El Pais and other media said.
“At least one device, of little power, has exploded in Belagua, Navarre,” an Interior Ministry spokesman said. El Pais said two bombs had gone off. The race had already passed through the town of Belagua at the time of the incident, local media reported.
Meanwhile, Italian Cristian Moreni of the Cofidis team has tested positive for the male sex hormone testosterone during the Tour de France, race organisers said on Wednesday. The Italian champion in 2004, failed a dope test after last Thursday's 11th stage from Marseille to Montpellier.
Also, a top official with Kazakhstan’s cycling federation accused the Tour de France of bias in the treatment of Alexandre Vinokourov and his Astana team in a doping scandal, adds AFP from Almaty. “We consider this as prejudice against our team,” said the deputy head of the federation, Nikolai Praskurin.