The head of France’s Anti-Doping Agency said Friday that Danish rider Michael Rasmussen submitted a sample that showed signs of the presence of Erythropoietin at this year’s Tour de France.

AFLD President Pierre Bordry cautioned, however, that the sample does not qualify as a positive, because the substance in question is a new version of the drug EPO that is much closer to human erythropoietin than the established version of the drug, Epogen.

"Traces of Dynepo, a biosimilar EPO, were found in Rasmussen's urine," AFLD President Pierre Bordry told the Reuters news service on Friday. "Rasmussen's test could not be declared positive because of the positivity criteria of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)."

Currently, the EPO test can be declared positive only if the erythropoietin used is the older version of Epogen. Since Dynepo is made from human cells, WADA researchers said the risk of a false positive is too great since it could be mistaken with human EPO.

Rasmussen was leading the Tour de France when he was kicked out of the race by his own team, after they said he lied about his whereabouts in the weeks leading up to the race.