After being forced to turn an uncharacteristically brutal Tirreno-Adriatico into a training ride, Cadel Evans probably clocked off wishing he had entered Paris-Nice instead.
With cycling’s big guns all turning out for the ‘Race of the Two Seas’ it was always going to be a tall order for Evans to repeat his overall Tirreno victory from 2011 – the year the Australian became the oldest man to win the Tour de France in the post-war era.
BMC’s solid performance to take third place in the opening team time trial set Evans up nicely for the week to come – but the 36-year-old’s hopes were dashed when he was dropped 7km from the summit of Prati Di Tivo in stage four, won by Sky’s Chris Froome.
“Sky come here a lot better prepared for this than I do. Their rhythm was a little too much for me, which puts my GC aspirations out of the window,” Evans wrote on his personal website after rolling in 1:13 down on last year’s Tour runner-up.
One day later, Spaniard Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha) won the queen stage to Chieti with Evans conceding the best part of eight minutes to the man they call Purito.
Evans’ diary entry that night was rather stoic and downbeat. “I can’t say much for the action in the front as my objectives switched to ‘training mode’ mid-way through the race,” he wrote. “No stress, sometimes things take a while so a little patience is required.”
Evans has proved in the past that patience can pay off – after all, his victory in the 2011 Tour came after successive 30th and 26th place finishes in the Grande Boucle. Indeed, when Cuddles did finally ride into Paris wearing the fabled maillot jaune it was the crowing point of a season which he had started very much as an outsider.
Victories in Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour of Romandie, plus a runner-up spot in the Criterium du Dauphine, changed that and Evans was quickly installed as one of the pre-race favourites for the 2011 Tour come July.
Last year, however, Evans only made it to the list of potential winners for the Tour thanks to some kind of ostensible honour bestowed upon defending champions.
Deep down, we all knew he had no chance: in the face of the rising Sky juggernaut with Wiggins behind the wheel, Evans cut a feeble character – riddled with illness, hampered by poor form and lacking in consistent race practice.
Back to the present day, and Evans partially redeemed himself in a “character building” sixth stage to Porto Sant’Elpidio, finishing in the main chasing group alongside the likes of Froome and Alberto Contador after trying to set up team-mate Thor Hushovd for the win.
Well over nine minutes down on GC going into the final individual time trial, Evans hardly had much to ride for.
Even so, finishing in 43rd place 47 seconds down on winner Tony Martin was a sad reflection on a man whose victory in the 2011 Tour was secured precisely by his time trialling abilities (albeit those in the face of the vastly inferior Andy Schleck).
Vincenzo Nibali secured a second successive Tirreno win in a week in which superstar Peter Sagan shone and all the other pre-race favourites – the likes of Froome, Contador and Rodriguez – finished in the top five. Evans, having switched to ‘training mode’ midway through the race, finished 22nd.
“I came here with only one race in my legs in the past seven months so in that respect I can’t have really high expectations,” Evans told BMC’s official website.
A couple of day earlier, the former world champion might well have watched his compatriot Richie Porte win the concluding time trial of Paris-Nice on Col d’Eze and had second thoughts about his race schedule.
While admirable that Evans wished to test his legs against his big rivals, the less demanding parcours of the ‘Race to the Sun’ could well have been better preparation – both physically and psychologically – for the veteran going into what could well be his final season as BMC’s de facto leader.
The only thing that worked in Evans’s favour, perhaps, was the fact that Tejay van Garderen, the young buck pushing him for team leadership ahead of the Tour, could only muster a fourth-place on GC from a decidedly average field.
The 24-year-old was largely anonymous during the race and finished 1:44 behind Porte having been outshone by another American youngster, Andrew Talansky of Garmin-Sharp.
It’s dangerous to draw too many conclusions from a particularly challenging Tirreno-Adriatico that was poleaxed by some terribly wet conditions.
But at the same time it’s fair to say that – as in 2012 – Evans is far from where he wants to be at this stage of the season.
And while he was quick to stress that he has to “take [his under-performance] in perspective with everything else” there’s very little to make fans believe that this season’s Tour can be any better for Evans than it was last year.
Evans told reporters during Tirreno that riding such a prestigious stage race for training rather than GC purposes “is not where I’m used to being and not the ideal place to be in” – but for us viewers, it’s an all-to-familiar sight of late.
So, where does Evans go from here?
Initially, the answer is home to Switzerland where he’ll enjoy the first major classic of the season – this Sunday’s Milan-San Remo – “from the comfort of my couch”.
Then he’ll be off to Corsica for the Criterium International – a two-day race that takes in some of the roads that will be covered when the Tour starts on the Mediterranean island on 29th June.
In one of 2012’s rare heady moments, Evans won the Criterium last March – so we should not read too much into how he performs this time round.
But there’s a sense that if Evans wants anything positive from the season, then it’s precisely in this kind of event – along with June’s Criterium du Dauphine (a race which he has four times finished runner-up in true Poulidor-esque fashion) – that Evans should perhaps be best advised to target. In hindsight, Paris-Nice should well have been on that list too.
Still, things could be worse. Andy Schleck, the man Evans beat into second place during the 2011 Tour, was reportedly spotted in a drunken state in a Munich hotel earlier in the week, hours after quitting the penultimate stage of Tirreno-Adriatico after just 50km.
However hard things are going for Evans, he’s still finishing races and has not gone off the rails.
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