The 33-year-old Spaniard was never going to win the stage, but his prime aim was to limit the damage to his overall lead from Australian Cadel Evans.

He lost just 29 seconds to give himself a lead of 1min 5sec over the Aussie going into today's final stage.

Austrian Bernhard Kohl is in third place, 1:20 off the pace.

The Australian, who wore the yellow jersey earlier in the tour, looks set to have to fill the runner's-up role as he did last year behind another Spaniard, Alberto Contador.

Sastre, barring a major mishap, will become Spain's third successive Tour de France champion after Contador last year and Oscar Pereiro in 2006.

Contador, who won the Giro d'Italia last month, did not take part in the Tour because his Astana team, with a past doping record, were not invited.

Sastre finished 12th-fastest, while Evans could come in only seventh.

The big loser overall was Luxembourg's former yellow jersey wearer Frank Schleck, who was even caught by Sastre despite the three-minute difference in starting time.

As a result of his poor performance, Schleck dropped from second to sixth overall.

The 20th stage was won by former yellow-jersey wearer Stefan Schumacher.

The 27-year-old German had won the previous time trial to don the yellow jersey.

Schumacher beat world time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland by 21sec.

Luxembourg's Kim Kirchen came home third.

Meanwhile, the Astana team have fired Russian cyclist Vladimir Gusev because of irregular data that showed up in internal testing.

Astana boss Johan Bruyneel said the Kazakhstan-owned team had no option but to fire Gusev.

Bruyneel said: 'Though his results do not indicate the use of forbidden substances, Vladimir's values exceeded the normal parameters.'

Gusev was tested out of competition by anti-doping expert Rasmus Damsgaard, who performs Astana's internal testing.

AFP, AP