page_title: Plateau de Beille
section_title: Tour de France
hierarchical_section_title: Plateau de Beille / Sport / Cycling / Tour de France
caption_attribution_description: Rasmussen (in the yellow jersey), was kicked off his team just a few days later for &amp;quot;breaking team rules.&amp;quot; He definitely missed a series of drug tests over the summer, but I suspect something else must have happened, too.Yellow Jersey Arrives
context_page_description: Plateau de Beille is a ski resort in the Pyrenees. It is situated in the Ariège department, and in the region of the Occitanie. The winter sports resort lies at a height of 1,790 m.
  For a long time, this plateau was only a place of livestock, especially cattle. It has recently become the site of a large winter sports resort of the Pyrenees, mainly dedicated to the practice of cross-country skiing, with tracks between 1,650 and 2,000 metres altitude. The ski station is located between Tarascon-sur-Ariège and Ax-les-Thermes, close to the Spanish border, and above the communes of Les Cabannes, Albiès and Vèbre. Road access to the plateau starts from Les Cabannes. Moreover, the Plateau de Beille is a crossing point of the GR 10 hiking trail that crosses the Pyrenees from east to west.
  Since 1998, the ascent from Les Cabannes to the plateau has regularly been used as the final ascent of a stage in the Tour de France. On the first four such occasions, the stage winner at Plateau de Beille also emerged as the winner of the general classification of that Tour.
context_section_description: Since its discovery by the Tour de France in 1998, the Plateau de Beille has served as stage finish five times (in 1998, 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2011). The ascent is ranked as hors catégorie in the mountains classification. The Tour de France returned to the Plateau de Beille for stage 12, on 16 July 2015.
  On the first four occasions, the stage winner has gone on to win the Tour: Marco Pantani in 1998, Lance Armstrong in 2002 and 2004 (but whose titles were removed from him in October 2012), and Alberto Contador in 2007 who won the Tour de France as a result of the exclusion of the Danish Michael Rasmussen.
caption: The yellow jersey arriving during the Tour de France 2007
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