CYCLING: The Tour de France's third-placed rider, Lithuania's Raimondas Rumsas, under suspicion of using banned drugs, turned into the two-wheeled equivalent of Lord Lucan yesterday - no one knew where he was, but everyone wanted to know.

The people with the most interest in his whereabouts were the drugs police in Lyon. They had expected Rumsas to turn up in the city yesterday to explain about a massive quantity of drugs, some on the banned list, that was found by customs men in a car driven by his wife Edita.

Yesterday, however, the Lithuanian rider looked to have gone AWOL.

Initially it was reported that Rumsas had missed the plane from Italy, where he is based during the season, but later his lawyer revealed that Rumsas is waiting for the full diplomatic might of his tiny Baltic homeland to be thrown behind him.

The country's ambassador to France, Asta Skaifgiryte-Liauskiene, is due today in Bonneville in the French Alps.