A rider on this year's Tour de France failed a dope test during the race, the International Cycling Union (UCI) announced on Wednesday.

"The UCI received today a report from the anti-doping laboratory in Paris stating (there was) an adverse analytical finding following an anti-doping test carried out at the Tour de France 2006," the sport's governing body said in a statement.

Details of the rider were not released and the UCI said their anti-doping rules did not allow them to make his name public at this time, although they added his team and national federation had been informed of the test result.

"The adverse analytical finding received this morning relates to the first analysis, and will have to be confirmed either by a counter-analysis required by the rider, or by the fact that the rider renounces (his right) to that counter-analysis," the statement read.

The test was conducted at a specialised anti-doping lab in Chatenay-Malabry, outside Paris, from a sample taken during the Tour.

Tour de France organisers were unavailable for immediate comment.

This year's Tour was hit by a doping scandal on the eve of the prologue when pre-race favourites Ivan Basso of Italy and German Jan Ullrich were forced to pull out and were suspended after being implicated in a doping investigation in Spain.

EYEING DOUBLE

Ullrich, winner of 1997 Tour, and Basso, who was eyeing a Giro d'Italia-Tour de France double, both denied any wrong-doing.

Ullrich was later sacked by his T-Mobile sponsor while team mate Oscar Sevilla and manager Rudy Pevenage were suspended.

Nine riders, including Francisco Mancebo who was fourth in last year's race, were pulled out of the Tour because of the investigation.

The whole of the Astana-Wuerth team had to withdraw as five of their riders were on a list provided by Spanish police.

The peloton was reduced from 21 to 20 teams and from 189 to 176 riders in the biggest doping scandal since the Festina affair which rocked the 1998 Tour and brought cycling to its knees.

The investigation in Spain came to light in May when the Spanish Civil Guard raided addresses in Madrid and Zaragoza and found large quantities of anabolic steroids, equipment used for blood transfusions and more than 100 bags of frozen blood.

A notoriously tough sport, cycling has been plagued by doping for years.

American Floyd Landis won the Tour in Paris on Sunday.

(Reuters July 27, 2006)