Local Lad Rising

It’s been a shocking morning. Went to bed at 1.30am after watching the live coverage of what seemed to be a marvellous stage of the Tour de France in the Pyrenees, displaying all that was good about the sport.

Turned on the radio at 7am to hear that the Cofidis team had withdrawn after a positive drug test. Then got to work to hear that the race leader, and winner of last night’s stage, Michael Rasmussen, had been sacked by his team for lying about which country he was in when he was supposed to have been undergoing a random, pre-race test.

As a friend pointed out, it’s easy to mistake Mexico for Italy when you’re on drugs.

If there’s a silver lining to this grubby cloud, it’s that Australian rider Cadell Evans is now lying second. He grew up near here and worked in a local cycle shop, Woodsey’s Wheels, in Woolgoolga.