Cycling Australia has laid out a June 17 deadline to select one rider to represent Australia in the Olympic Games time trial. Will this be our Tour de France champion Cadel Evans? Surprisingly, there’s no guarantee.
Evans, if he is there will be one of the favourites to win, but he says he won’t let that compromise his preparation for the Tour de France.
He wants the selectors to trust him on past performance, no matter what his form is in June. As the Tour de France champion, he deserves their trust.
The problem, though, is that Richie Porte of Team Sky has a very good claim to the Australian Olympic time trial place, as to a lesser extent do the three time world time trial champion Michael Rogers (Team Sky) and the 2012 Australian time trial champion Luke Durbridge (Orica-GreenEdge).
All four will take part in the Dauphine Libere race, an important stage race in France that takes place between June 3rd and June 10th.
There’s a 53 kilometre individual time trial in Dauphine Libere, so should the best Australian finisher in the Dauphine time trial get the Olympic place? If it’s Evans, yes, but if not then no.
It might sound crazy but a better guide to Evans’ Olympic potential won’t be a time trial in June 2012, it’s a time trial that happened in July 2011.
Evans was second in the final time trial of the 2011 Tour de France, seven seconds behind the world champion Tony Martin, but one minute 23 seconds ahead of fifth placed Porte, and four minutes 37 seconds ahead of the next Australian, Stuart O’Grady, in 55th place.
That’s the kind of form Evans will be in at the end of the 2012 Tour de France, and that’s the form he can take into the Olympic time trial ten days later.
Richie Porte is good, and he could even win the Olympic title in the future, but Evans can win it now.
The idea of having a selection race, like the Dauphine Libere time trial would be, works in many sports, but it doesn’t work in elite road cycling. There’s too much else going on, even in an Olympic year.
Whereas many sports plan their programmes around Olympic Games, and the Games are their pinnacle of achievement, a male pro road racer can’t do that. The Olympics aren’t the number one target in pro cycling – the Tour de France is.
The Olympics were almost grafted onto cycling when they went open in 1996, before then the pros who took part in races like the Tour weren’t eligible for the Games.
Evans is right to say he’s not willing to accelerate his Tour de France preparation to be on top form at the Dauphine Libere. He’s asking the selectors to pick him on past form.
Bradley Wiggins, who will be one of Evans’ big rivals in the Tour, doesn’t have to do it, and his selection by Team GB for the Olympic time trial is assured.
But why is it too much to expect Evans to peak for a day in the Dauphine Libere then again at the Tour de France?
Because the kind of form that’s needed in the Tour must be built slowly. In fact the longer the build period the longer top form lasts and the better it will be.
Evans is building up to this year’s Tour de France with the confidence that only a Tour winner can.
Lance Armstrong designed the blueprint for Tour preparation during his run of seven consecutive victories, but he only won the Dauphine Libere twice in the same period. And in 2003 he reckons that excellent form in the Dauphine nearly lost him the Tour.
Tour form was that finely balanced almost ten years ago, but it is even more of a knife edge thing now. Evans wasn’t half the racer in the 2011 Dauphine that he was in the Tour. Bradley Wiggins almost caught him in the Dauphine long time trial and had the Brit not crashed he wouldn’t have done that to Evans in the Tour.
Evans timed his Tour prep perfectly last year, because he got stronger as the race progressed. If he does the same this year he can win again, and he will still have enough form to medal and even win gold in London.
That’s what Bradley Wiggins is trying to do, and British Cycling is letting him do it. Cycling Australia must show the same confidence in Evans.
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