The Tour de France, as Cadel Evans and every other yellow jersey contender likes to say, is never won in a day - but can be lost in a day.
That day came for Evans on Saturday, when he lost out on making history for Australia for the second year in a row. And again, it was to a Spanish rider.
After losing out by just 23 seconds to Alberto Contador last year, Evans saw his yellow jersey dreams shatter when he failed to overhaul a 1 minute 34 second deficit to CSC's Carlos Sastre during the penultimate stage time trial.
Sastre, 33, led Evans by 65 seconds going into yesterday's final, and usually celebratory, stage to Paris.
"Sastre's ride in the time trial today for me was a real surprise," Evans said after finishing the 53-kilometer ride from Cerilly to Saint-Amand-Montrond in seventh place on Saturday. Sastre placed 12th as German rider Stefan Schumacher clinched his second clock race of the Tour, beating two-time world champion Fabian Cancellara by 21 seconds.
Evans, a Silence-Lotto rider, said Sastre benefited from having a much stronger team - particularly in the Alpine stages, where the Spaniard managed to finally drop Evans on the famed climb up to L'Alpe d'Huez, the turning point of the Tour.
"On the climbs, CSC were so strong. It comes down to that?they have two or three times the budget we do," Evans said.
"They can straight away buy much better quality riders. Strength in numbers...it was no surprise."
Evans beat Sastre by over 2:30 in last year's equivalent time trial, and was surprised to beat him by such a small margin this time. Austrian rider Bernhard Kohl finished only 16 seconds behind Evans, after being 1:20 slower over a much shorter distance on stage four's time trial in Cholet.
"There were some guys riding surprisingly fast," Evans said. "I got some time checks from the other riders and thought, 'What's going on here?'"
After losing to Contador's superior Discovery Channel team last year, Evans again had to scrap largely alone as CSC often sent three riders - Cancellara, Jens Voigt and Andy Schleck - to create a fast tempo to exhaust him.
"There were guys attacking me left, right and center," Evans said. "Defending from that is not an easy task."
Evans was lucky to escape serious injury to his left shoulder when he crashed on stage nine, and recovered to gain the yellow jersey in the high Pyrenees on stage 10. He held on to the lead until CSC's Frank Schleck took it from him on stage 15.
Having finished eighth overall in 2005, fourth in 2006, and runner-up twice, Evans said he has "three or four good Tours left" to finally become the first Australian to win the coveted race.
"I am always proud to promote the sport a bit. Cycling is not in our culture," he said. "It's a beautiful sport, enjoy it. To defend yellow as long as I did, that was a pretty good ride."
(
Shanghai Daily July 28, 2008)