Cadel in top slot for start of Tour

03Jul08

WIDELY touted as the man to beat at this year’s Tour, Cadel Evans, 31, will start the race in Brest on Saturday with the No1 bib on his back.

The Victorian was second in last year’s Tour, 23sec behind Alberto Contador who will not start this year’s event.

The number one was not used during last year’s event as the doping case that stripped 2006 winner Floyd Landis of his title meant that that result was still under dispute.

Oscar Pereiro was declared the winner of the 2006 Tour and will be the only previous winner to start this year’s race.

Yesterday, the Court of Arbitration for Sport rejected Landis’s appeal against the two-year doping ban for testing positive for synthetic testosterone on the 17th stage of the 2006 Tour.

He was also ordered to pay $US100,000 ($105,000) towards the cost of arbitration over the ban, which started on January 30, 2007.

Contador’s Astana team was not invited to this year’s Tour after the squad was thrown out of last year’s event following a positive sample recorded by Alexandre Vinokourov.

Evans’ mission statement this year is a simple one: “The team is focused and dedicated. We can win so let’s try.”

John Trevorrow, a retired road professional from Geelong and long regarded as Evans’ mentor, believes the Silence-Lotto rider is in picture perfect form heading into the race start.

“The way he’s prepared for the race by training in the Italian high Alps tells me he’s feeling really good about his chances in the Tour,” Trevorrow said. “The thing about Cadel is that he has blossomed and grown as a rider since he made the switch from mountain bikes to the road.

“We all saw it in the way he rode at the Dauphine Libere last month, one of the traditional lead-up races to the Tour.

“His riding was simply brilliant even though he was plagued with a twinge of knee tendonitis which forced him to take a short break off the bike.

“But the break has freshened him up and he’s raring to go.”

A record-equalling 10 Australians will be on the start line for the opening stage, a 197.5km flat run for the sprinters from Brest to Plumelec in Brittany, ideal for Evans’ team-mate Robbie McEwen to win.

But McEwen won’t have it all on his own with Baden Cooke (Barloworld) back on tour after an absence of three years.

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