Gareth McCullough, who originally finished second in the 2019 Masters +40 Champs, has been retrospectively crowned champion. Robin Kelly has been awarded the silver, and Gordon Boland the bronze after being moved up from fourth as the original winner Walker tested positive winning the National Over-40 Road Race held in Wexford last year! A four-year ban has been imposed. The in-competition testing carried out on behalf of Sport Ireland and Cycling Ireland later revealed that Walker had four anti-doping rule violations!! Testing positive for the banned anabolic substances epioxandrolone, oxandrolone, 18-noroxandrolone and boldenone. Such a pity that Gareth never had the chance of wearing this jersey in the few races he done this year, but happy that there is still some justice done. I personally don’t understand why such things can happen in amateur veterans races, and if the money was there to do such checks regularly in amateur races, we probably find more culprits. But at least there is a warning there that if you cheat, you can be found out. My thoughts are with the honest riders, they lost out somehow.
