Sunday's victory ride through the heart of Paris likely will be unforgettable -- for all the wrong reasons.

Michael Rasmussen had seemed certain to win. Now, the winner's yellow jersey will rest on someone else's shoulders. The last four days of racing will decide whose.

But will anyone care?

Some French newspapers declared the Tour dead Thursday and said it should be stopped after the bombshell announcement late Wednesday night that Rasmussen's team was sending the Dane home for lying.

Team spokesman Jacob Bergsma said Rasmussen's withdrawal was ordered by their sponsor, Rabobank. It was linked to "incorrect" information that Rasmussen gave to the team's sports director over his whereabouts last month. Rasmussen 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.

The remaining members of the team will still take the start on Thursday, Bergsma said.

Rasmussen had been the leader since July 15.

"My career is ruined," he told Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

"I have no idea what I should do or where I will go," the newspaper quoted him as saying. "This is an enormous blow for me, and also for all the guys from the Rabo team. They're devastated."

Only once before in the 104-year-old Tour has the race leader been expelled. In 1978, Belgian rider Michel Pollentier, trying to evade doping controls after winning a stage at the Alpe d'Huez in the Alps, was caught with an intricate tube-and-container system that contained urine that was not his, said Tour historian Jean-Paul Brouchon.

With Rasmussen out, Spanish rider Alberto Contador of the Discovery Channel moves into the race lead. Australian Cadel Evans, who rides for Predictor-Lotto, moves up to second, with U.S. rider Levi Leipheimer, also with Discovery, now third.

Thursday's stage 17 over 117 miles from Pau to Castelsarrasin was taking the Tour away from the Pyrenees and north in the direction of Paris.

Just hours before he was removed from the Tour, Rasmussen spoke to The AP -- after a doping control following his win in Wednesday's stage 16 -- and said he was being victimized.

"Of course I'm clean," Rasmussen said. "Like I said, I've been tested 17 times now in less than two weeks. Both the Peleton and the public, they're just taking their frustration out on me now. I mean, all I can say is that by now I had my test number 17 on this Tour and all of those have come back negative. I don't feel I can do anymore than that."

But as Rasmussen crept toward what would have been his first Tour victory, race directors repeatedly said he never should have been allowed to compete.

"We cannot say that Rasmussen cheated, but his flippancy and his lies on his whereabouts had become unbearable," Tour director Christian Prudhomme told The Associated Press, reacting to Rasmussen's withdrawal.

The head of cycling's governing body applauded the decision.

"My immediate reaction is, why didn't they do this at the end of June, when they had the same information?" International Cycling Union president Pat McQuaid told The AP.

"The team decided to pull him out -- that's their prerogative. I can only applaud that. It's a zero-tolerance policy and it's a lesson for the future."

After the Tour's upbeat start in London, when millions of spectators lined streets to watch, bad news -- nearly all of it related to doping -- quickly dominated.

German rider Patrick Sinkewitz crashed into a spectator and was then revealed to have failed a drug test in training before the Tour. Star Alexandre Vinokourov was sent home after testing positive for a banned blood transfusion. On Wednesday, as Rasmussen was riding toward his stage win, the Cofidis squad confirmed that its Italian rider Cristian Moreni failed a doping test, prompting the withdrawal of the entire squad.

Police detained Moreni after he finished the stage and searched the hotel where his Cofidis team was staying. Results from the raid weren't expected until Thursday. France has tough laws against trafficking in doping products.

Cofidis manager Eric Boyer said Moreni "accepted his wrongdoing" and waived his right for a follow-up test to confirm the results of the first, which was positive for the male hormone testosterone.

Rasmussen's ejection spared Tour organizers having a rider clouded by suspicion standing atop the winner's podium on the Champs-Elysees on Sunday. Rasmussen had a lead of 3 minutes, 10 seconds over Contador which, barring an upset, should have been sufficient to carry him through the last four days to victory.

Although Rasmussen has not tested positive, some fellow cyclists and many race observers were baffled by his performance in a time trial last Saturday, when he stunned the field by finishing 11th -- good enough to retain his overall lead. Lacking the power that usually makes for good time-trialing, Rasmussen had been expected to flounder in the event -- as he had at the 2005 Tour, when he fell off his bike twice in a time trial, dashing his hopes of a podium finish.

That time trial and the way he has fended off rivals in the mountains with apparent ease added to the scepticism about the rider.

Fans had booed Rasmussen at the start of Wednesday's stage, and mostly French teams staged a protest to express disgust at the doping scandals that have left cycling's credibility in tatters. As the starter's flag came down, dozens of protesting riders stood still as Rasmussen, ace sprinter Tom Boonen and several others began riding away.

Some riders were forced to lift up their bicycles to get around their protesting colleagues, who eventually raced. But the message was sent. The demonstration caused a 13-minute delay.

Jean-Francois Lamour, vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, suggested on Wednesday that the sport should be withdrawn from the Olympics. German public broadcasters have stopped airing the race, and one of Switzerland's biggest newspapers stopped writing about it. The daily Tages Anzeiger said on its Web site on Wednesday it will limit its coverage to results and doping stories.

Associated Press Writers Jamey Keaten and Jean-Luc Courthial in Gourette, France, John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.