Spaniard Carlos Sastre was poised to win the Tour de France after surprisingly resisting Australia's Cadel Evans in Saturday's 53km time-trial won by German Stefan Schumacher. Gerolsteiner's Schumacher, who also won the first time-trial of the race, clocked a best time of one hour three minutes and 50 seconds to beat Swiss Fabian Cancellara by 21 seconds, with Luxembourg's Kim Kirchen coming home third. Evans, who had been widely expected to overcome a 1:34 deficit to leapfrog Sastre, cracked and could only finish seventh, beating the Spaniard by just 29 seconds. Going into Sunday's parade to the Champs Elysees, Sastre leads Evans by 1:05, with Austrian Bernhard Kohl in third place 1:20 off the pace. Sastre, riding his eighth Tour de France, should become the third Spaniard in a row to win the world's greatest stage race, after Oscar Pereiro and Alberto Contador. Contador, who won the Giro d'Italia last month, did not take part in the Tour because his Astana team were not invited because of their past doping record. This year's Tour has also been marred by doping. Spaniards Manuel Beltran and Moises Duenas Nevado were kicked out after testing positive for the banned blood-booster EPO. Italian Riccardo Ricco, winner of two stages, was also dismissed following a positive EPO test, with the whole of his Saunier Duval team leaving the race before the 12th stage. Astana fires Gusev The Astana cycling team, banned from this year's Tour de France, has fired Russian cyclist Vladimir Gusev because of irregular data that showed up in internal testing. Astana boss Johan Bruyneel, who took over after eight straight Tour wins with Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador at the US Postal and Discovery teams, said the Kazakhstan-owned team had no option but to fire Gusev. “Vladimir Gusev has been officially notified that he no longer represents Team Astana,” Bruyneel said. “Though his results do not indicate the use of forbidden substances, Vladimir's values exceeded the normal parameters.” Gusev was tested out of competition by anti-doping expert Rasmus Damsgaard, who performs Astana's internal testing. “It's impossible for any team manager to know the activities of riders behind closed doors, but we continue to enforce that Team Astana has a 100 percent, no tolerance policy,” Bruyneel said. “On a brighter note, this proves that Dr. Damsgaard's system works and we are committed to racing clean.”
