Cadel Evans (BMC) is one day of formality away from his biggest triumph in his racing career, the win of the Tour de France. No Australian has accomplished that before him. Evans was teary-eyed after beating his closest overall rival, Andy Schleck (Leopard Trek) by 2'31 and has now a 1'34 lead over the Luxemburger.
When Evans crossed the line he slightly shook his head when he realized that he didn't win the stage, but that disappointment quickly passed. "I rode the best time trial I could today," he said on the team's website. He and his American team laid the foundation in the previous three weeks. "Every day, we rode the best we could. Every day, the team did 99.9 percent, if not 100 percent," the perfectionist said.
Not all went smooth. "I had a couple of off days, a couple moments of bad luck. But we just kept to our plan and every day we kept working." One of the most impressive memories of this year's Tour de France will be how Evans dragged the group up the Col du Galibier in pursuit of lone breakaway rider Andy Schleck. It was a key moment because if Evans had not cut Schleck's lead from four minutes to a bit more than two minutes, the overall situation would have looked a lot more complicated.
As it panned out, Evans trailed Andy Schleck 'only' by 57 seconds at today's start of the race. In 2009, Schleck had conceded only 31 seconds to Evans in the final time trial, which also lasted around an hour. Evans and BMC Racing Team Directeur Sportif John Lelangue decided on an offensive, stage-winning approach. "That way, we had no pressure about the jersey or the GC," Lelangue said. The run-in was technical, with a tricky descent into Grenoble. "We could have actually won the time trial because we were within two seconds of Tony Martin in the last downhill, but I didn't want him to take too many risks. I actually had to slow him down."
BMC Racing Team President and General Manager Jim Ochowicz said it was difficult to put into words the magnitude of Evans's accomplishment. "It's an incredible victory for Cadel, first and foremost," Ochowicz said. "The entire team and the riders and staff have put an incredible amount of effort into this whole event." The whole season was based with the victory in Paris in mind. "The Tour doesn't start on the first day. It starts well in advance of that with hard training and preparation and a lot of work by everyone to prepare for the race."
Evans sometimes felt a lack of complete support and commitment at Lotto, but at BMC everything went fine. "You never know what the outcome is going to be," Ochowicz said. "But from Day One, Cadel attacked the race and the team was there every day to back him up, keep him out of trouble and do the work that needed to be done."
Both Evans (2007, 2008) and Andy Schleck (2009, 2010) have finished second twice before in the Grand Boucle around France. In 2007, Evans came within 23 seconds of overall victory. This time, he did not want to end in the runner-up position again. But becoming the first Australian to win Le Tour had not sunk in yet. "I have to take a moment to sort of take everything in," he said. "I've been concentrating on going as quickly as I could over those 42 kilometers today. I hope everyone has enjoyed it."