Michael Rasmussen

Michael Rasmussen is a retired Danish professional cyclist who raced on the road and on mountain bikes. His best known results are four stages of the Tour de France, a shared Danish record, and one stage of the Vuelta a España, and he won the best climber classification at the Tour in 2005 and 2006. A pure climber of very low body weight, he liked to break away early on mountain stages and ride most of the stage alone. In the 2007 Tour de France he was wearing the yellow jersey and well placed to win when his team terminated his contract and removed him from the race. He served a two-year ban for lying about his whereabouts and in 2013 admitted using banned drugs and blood doping for most of his career.