Armstrong may be back but the glory days are gone for everyone

LANCE ARMSTRONG is back in the saddle Down Under, if we can be forgiven for throwing three prepositions into the one sentence.

The man who won the Tour de France seven times is racing in the Tour Down Under in South Australia, and doing pretty well for a man making his return to professional cycling: as of yesterday he was 68th, though he’d also escaped a crash that forced nine other competitors to withdraw from the race.

At one level Armstrong seems already to be a relic of a bygone age — the boom years, long before the advent of such improbable notions as the prospect of Anglo Irish Bank being nationalised, or the value of your house falling in value instead of shooting upwards.