CYCLING/Tour de France:Just as in the scandal-hit Tour of 1998, there were two Tours de France going on yesterday. There was a cycle race between Pau and this attractive little town north of Toulouse, where Britain's David Millar managed fifth after a sterling day-long escape, and there was a parallel "event", a nether world of police inquiries and manouevrings among the powers that be.

The Italian Cristian Moreni was released from provisional detention in Pau during the afternoon, having been taken in yesterday morning for questioning following the announcement of his positive test for testosterone on Wednesday afternoon.

"The inquiry will continue, there will be other witnesses to be questioned and tests will be carried out," said the Pau prosecutor Erick Maurel, heading an inquiry into a possible contravention of France's anti-drugs laws. Other persons linked to the inquiry, not named, were being questioned yesterday.

While Moreni's Cofidis team-mates, including Britain's Bradley Wiggins, were on their way home yesterday after the team's withdrawal from the race, the other team in the eye of the Tour drugs storm, the Kazakh squad Astana, were digesting their leader Alexandr Vinokourov's positive test for blood doping.

Analysis of Vino's second sample is expected to begin today.

The Kazakh announced that he and the Kazakh cycling federation have hired an American lawyer to help them fight his case.

"He is already defending Floyd Landis," said Vino. "They have assured me that I have a concrete-solid case."

There was, inevitably, further reaction to the ejection of the race leader Michael Rasmussen, the first time such a thing had happened on the Tour since 1978. That event, too, is now the subject of a police preliminary inquiry.

Among those speaking about the Dane was the Australian Cadel Evans, who lies second overall, one minute 53 seconds behind the new race leader, Alberto Contador.

Evans, like Rasmussen a former world-class mountain biker, recalled the Dane's form from their days racing on fat-tyred bikes with suspension forks.

"I was in front of him for three years. But in 1999, when he won the world championship, he left everyone behind. He just went when he felt like it. I found his progression bizarre but what can you say? His progress after that was erratic. Not really erratic even, because it wasn't progress, he just had one or two good days each year."

Amid the chaos the World Anti-Doping Agency called for a summit on the state of cycling to which all parties involved - riders, teams, organisers, officials - would be called in order to "restore the credibility and integrity of cycling".

Millar, meanwhile, was engaged in his own little battle to advance the sport's credibility and integrity.

He is now evangelical in his anti-doping zeal and wanted to win the stage in order to be able to make a statement about the issues the Tour faces.

The mere fact of his victory, by a cyclist who is now openly clean and involved in the fight against doping, would have been a strong message in itself.

"I thought that if I won I could stand up and say something but I didn't have the legs," said Millar. "My mind was there but my body wasn't."

He launched the stage-winning attack - as he had said on Monday he would - but he could not follow through with the victory after being joined by seven other cyclists including the German Jens Voigt.

"When I went it was the right moment and I was strong enough to do that but when Voigt and the others came up to me he was already putting me completely in the hurt bag, as my friend Stuart O'Grady would say."

The escape took half the stage to earn more than two minutes' lead, with Voigt and Millar pitting themselves against several teams who had missed the move.

His strength fading, Millar did not manage to fight his way into the quartet - Voigt, the Swiss Martin Elmiger, the young German Marcus Fothen and the Italian sprinter Daniele Bennati - who fought out the stage win, with Bennati taking his first victory in the race.

Millar now has his sights set on tomorrow's time-trial stage from Angouleme to Cognac.

There was one other, more mysterious note. French radio stations announced, just as yesterday's stage got under way, that a further positive drug test was imminent involving a sample taken in one of the Pyrenean stages.

There was no news yesterday but to say the rumour did not cause a single eyelid to be batted is an understatement.

Positive drug tests shock no one here any more.