As there was no outstanding cycling personality during 1997 the vote for cyclist of the year was very close between half a dozen candidates with Raymond Clarke of the Premier team in Clonmel just shading it.

Regrettably, the most memorable aspect of the season was that three men were found to have used prohibited performance-enhancing drugs. Karl Donnelly and Jason Crowe tested positive after medical checks following races at Newry and Lurgan and the other instance was when Michael Quinn was on international duty in Spain.

Efforts are being made by the FIC to stamp out such behaviour - a list of all substances banned by the UCI and OCI is to be included in the FIC Yearbook and advice on medication will be available. In my opinion the suspensions of the guilty trio were not severe enough given the damage they did to the sport.

In the ballot for cyclist of the year my number one vote went to Morgan Fox, with David McCann second and Clarke third. Fox had only one win, but that was in the National Road Race championship at Carrick-on-Suir at the end of June.

All the top contenders were there and Fox, like many others, came back from France to take part and he beat them all to take the title with McCann second and Clarke in the bronze medal position.

Clarke emerged best in the Callcard Classic league - he won two of the eight events that counted and accumulated 61 points, with David Peelo runner-up on 56. Peelo was a triple champion - he took the hill climb title and the points race and kilometre time trial on the track. FBD Milk Ras winner Andy Roche and Micheal Fitzgerald were also to the fore in the voting but the verdict went to Clarke.

Among the list of Paddy Power's novelty bets for 1998 is 1,000 to 1 that the first stage of the Tour de France in Ireland will be cancelled because of potholes.