/world sport
ERANDIO, Spain -- Kim Kirchen of Luxembourg won the second stage and Alberto Contador kept the overall lead of the Tour of Basque Country race on Tuesday.
Former T-Mobile rider Kirchen, now of High Road, won the second stage of the Tour of the Basque Country.
Kirchen won the 95-mile stage in 3 hours, 40 minutes, 42 seconds. He edged world champion Paolo Bettini of Italy and David Herrero of Spain, who finished in the same time.
Tour de France champion Contador finished in the main peloton and remains three seconds ahead of compatriot Ezequiel Mosquera whose Karpin-Galicia team-mate is a further five seconds adrift.
Contador is barred from defending his Tour title because the Spanish cyclist rides for the banned Astana team.
"It might have come across as boring on the television but the rain showers that fell during the final kilometers made the stage dangerous," he said. "Everyone was going very fast to earn precious seconds and luckily I did not fall."
Elsewhere, Domenico Quagliarello received a ban for life and Eddy Mazzoleni was banned two years by the Italian cycling federation for involvement in a doping scandal.
Mazzoleni, who finished third in last year's Giro d'Italia, has been linked to Carlo Santuccione, an Italian doctor who allegedly provided doping products to athletes.
Santuccione is at the center of a four-year-old case named "Oil for Drugs."
The Italian cycling federation imposed the ban on the recommendation of anti-doping prosecutors with the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI). Mazzoleni, who has denied doping, can appeal the decision.
The federation said Tuesday that both riders were suspended for attempted use of either a prohibited substance or method. Quagliarello received the stiffer penalty on a request by CONI because he was banned for doping in 2002.
Mazzoleni quit the Astana team in July after it suspended him pending the outcome of the investigation. E-mail to a friend 
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