Are sportspeople heroes?

There's been a bit of talk about this since Cadel Evans won the Tour de France last weekend.

A bit of a brouhaha involving a social/media commentator on a national breakfast TV show. It doesn't seem to be dying away just yet, and I don't want to breathe new life into the issue as it starts to flail, so I won't "name and shame". I've been stewing over it a bit though, and as a result this blog post has been writing itself all week. I've finally had the time to tap this out, belated and blown over as the issue might be.