Rumsas denies using drugs
Raimondas Rumsas has denied using drugs to achieve his third-place finish in the Tour de France.
The denial came as his wife was put under investigation and jailed after being caught with alleged doping agents.
"I have never taken anything. My Tour is clean," Rumsas was quoted as saying by the Gazzetta dello Sport.
The Lithuanian was suspended by his team Lampre on Monday pending results by investigators.
Enrico Carpani, a spokesman for world cycling's governing body, the UCI, said that all of Rumsas' drug tests carried out during the Tour produced negative results.
Edita Rumsas, the cyclist's wife, was stopped on Sunday en route to Italy by French customs officials.
In her car was a cooler containing the endurance-booster EPO, growth hormones, testosterone and anabolic agents, French prosecutor Vincent Le Pannerer said. All are banned by the UCI.
Speaking of the drugs, Rumsas was quoted as saying in the newspaper interview that "she (Edita) was bringing them from Lithuania for my mother-in-law, Yakstenia."
Edita Rumsas was placed under formal investigation for supplying doping products after a hearing before an investigative magistrate and jailed. The investigation did not say for whom the products were intended.
"The explanations given by the rider's wife are for now incomplete and in some cases hardly credible," Le Pannerer told a news conference. "They require numerous further inquiries."
