Is Cadel Evans destined to be the "lonely rider"?

[hfer07]

T-mobile could care less about him as a GT rider
Lotto wasn't a 100% with him for his TDF attemps
Now BMC is "under doping allegations".....
so I ask myself... Is Cadel Evans gonna have to do it all by himself? is there any place/team he could ever fit in? I really feel sorry for him.......

please opine

 

[luckyboy]

There were rumours about him going to Garmin when it was announced he was leaving Lotto. I'd be regretting not going there tbh.

 

[Highlander]

Although Lotto usually had McEwen to split their interests, they did make some efforts to support Evans. They signed Popo, Horner, Kohl, and Dekker all to be his support, but they either fell out because of doping concerns or didn't ride the same way that they did on other teams. Both Popo and Horner were/are big support riders for other squads, but never did much when they were expected to help Evans get up the mountains.

 

[alberto.legstrong]

Although Lotto usually had McEwen to split their interests, they did make some efforts to support Evans. They signed Popo, Horner, Kohl, and Dekker all to be his support, but they either fell out because of doping concerns or didn't ride the same way that they did on other teams. Both Popo and Horner were/are big support riders for other squads, but never did much when they were expected to help Evans get up the mountains.

Maybe RS will try to sign him after July.

 

[Ryo Hazuki]

Maybe RS will try to sign him after July.

I don't see why. evans isn't exatcly young and they already have enough aged gt riders with better results and experience like kloden and leipheimer and perhaps armstrong for another year

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I don't see why. evans isn't exatcly young and they already have enough aged gt riders with better results and experience like kloden and leipheimer and perhaps armstrong for another year

Klöden and Leipheimer's GT results are better than Evans'?!

 

[tgsgirl]

Klöden and Leipheimer's GT results are better than Evans'?!

Come one, we all know Levi's got three Grand Tours on his palmares!

 

[BikeCentric]

I think he's had a lot of bad luck in his career. I don't buy the whole "Evans is a d!ck who is not charismatic enough to unite a strong team behind him" spin. He's no worse than any other cyclist personality-wise IMHO. He's gotten screwed by poor team situations several times now and people are going to write that down to either bad luck or a pattern that must be his fault simply depending on whether they are a fan or not. I'm not an Evans fan but I do root for underdogs and this guy does seem to be a perennial underdog despite being a darn good and consistant rider.

 

[Willy_Voet]

I don't see why. evans isn't exatcly young

That is precisely why they would sign him.

 

[BikeCentric]

That is precisely why they would sign him.

Yeah, they don't call 'em "Retirement Shack" for nothing!

 

[El Oso]

Although Lotto usually had McEwen to split their interests, they did make some efforts to support Evans. They signed Popo, Horner, Kohl, and Dekker all to be his support, but they either fell out because of doping concerns or didn't ride the same way that they did on other teams. Both Popo and Horner were/are big support riders for other squads, but never did much when they were expected to help Evans get up the mountains.

I thought Horner did pretty well for Evans. Evans must have kicked himself or Lotto for letting Horner go.

Popo obviously was a huge bust.

Dekker was a mistake since there already was a ton of smoke, they had to have known it'd go down with Dekker.

 

[tgsgirl]

Cuddles' Curse is merciless. You can run, but you can't hide...

 

[David Suro]

I think BMC will be 100% behind Evans for the grand tours. It is good business for them to do it that way.

The support riders of BMC are pretty good. Hincapie has a lot of winning experience as a super-domestique. Evans' for m is good and he brings the confidence of a major win into the grand tour season.

The sponsor will surely want Evans to animate the races so the BMC brand is mentioned in print and on the TV a lot.

I doubt if anyone thinks Evans can beat Contador in July. That gives him the opportunity attack every chance he gets. He can come out of the TdF without a spot on the podium but the dignity of being the man who makes the race interesting. If that pitch is sold to his team, they just might rise to the occasion and make it a lot of fun and provide a lot of exposure for the sponsor.

 

[BroDeal]

I think he's had a lot of bad luck in his career. I don't buy the whole "Evans is a d!ck who is not charismatic enough to unite a strong team behind him" spin. He's no worse than any other cyclist personality-wise IMHO. He's gotten screwed by poor team situations several times now and people are going to write that down to either bad luck or a pattern that must be his fault simply depending on whether they are a fan or not. I'm not an Evans fan but I do root for underdogs and this guy does seem to be a perennial underdog despite being a darn good and consistant rider.

Evans screwed himself. He has never taken control of his career and put himself in a team environment where he would have the support to win a GT.

 

[jaylew]

Both Popo and Horner were/are big support riders for other squads, but never did much when they were expected to help Evans get up the mountains.

I agree about Popo. His performance dropped way off from the LA years but I wouldn't say Horner was a disappointment. He'd had some success at Saunier Duval, but hadn't proven he could be a top domestique in the mtns in a GT at that point. If I recall, he was in the last 10-20 riders on mtn top finishes and finished 15th overall at the Tour the year Cadel finished 2nd to AC.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

I think BMC will be 100% behind Evans for the grand tours. It is good business for them to do it that way.

The support riders of BMC are pretty good. Hincapie has a lot of winning experience as a super-domestique. Evans' for m is good and he brings the confidence of a major win into the grand tour season.

The sponsor will surely want Evans to animate the races so the BMC brand is mentioned in print and on the TV a lot.

Of course BMC will be 100% behind Evans, they have no reason not to be. The problem is, what support DO they have for him? Hincapie is old, there's no getting around it. He was a very good rider in his time but when was the last time he was up with the heads of state in a big mountain stage? The stage to Jausiers in the 2008 Tour springs to mind, but that was when he'd been in the break all day. There's no way he's putting any big names out the back in the mountains the way a Szmyd or Tondo could be if they get on the front for Pellizotti, Basso and Sastre. And beyond that, ARE the support riders of BMC pretty good? They've got potential, but they're a whole bunch of unknown quantities at Grand Tour level. They've not set the world alight in any way, shape or form yet this season, and with Kroon injured, and Ballan and Santambrogio suspended, they lack depth. Thomas Frei looked like one of the better riders, but he's out of the question now. Who will still be there for Cuddles on Passo Tonale when we're into week 3? Because barring a crash, we know Sylwester Szmyd will still be putting people out the back!

The other problem is that, whereas BMC will want Cuddles to animate the race, I'm not sure if it's in his interest to animate the race too much, certainly not before he's run out of teammates in the lead group. That would just play into the hands of the likes of Basso and Sastre. I don't see him distancing pure climbers like Pellizotti if they're on form, but he could well have a deficit from the TTT to make up, which instantly puts it out of his control.

Mano a mano, Cuddles is a match for any of the riders he'll come up against in the Giro. And he's coming into some excellent form at the moment too. Now, whether or not he can match the riders he'll come up against in the Tour is a different question.

 

[Highlander]

I agree about Popo. His performance dropped way off from the LA years but I wouldn't say Horner was a disappointment. He'd had some success at Saunier Duval, but hadn't proven he could be a top domestique in the mtns in a GT at that point. If I recall, he was in the last 10-20 riders on mtn top finishes and finished 15th overall at the Tour the year Cadel finished 2nd to AC.

I know Horner's overall placing wasn't bad, but I never really saw him do much to help Evans during that Tour. I always think that those domestiques should help set a pace or do something for their leader, but Horner just seemed to ride with the lead group until he couldn't maintain it anymore. Granted I could be wrong as I'm just going by what I remember rather than looking any of this up.

 

[Mellow Velo]

Evans had Ballan and Santambroggio for Giro support. Both now sit on the sideline.
Then Thomas Frei suddenly looked to be a useful mountain domestique for the Giro. He's now permenantly sidelined.

For the Tour, they save good old George, Markus Burghardt (hardly T Mob's top domi dog) and Karsten "mountain goat" Kroon. The latter is already in a race to return, to serve his new master.

Who would care to pick a GT team from the rest of their roster?


I always thought they would struggle to field a decent team, even without their current misfortune.

BMC bought an Australian basket and some fragile eggs, yet have managed to sell this fare to both the Italians and French.
No prizes for spotting the biggest fools.

 

[luckyboy]

Kroon is hoping to be back for the Tour of California, I think.

The team was pretty bad from the start. Worse than Silence were for mountain support, I think.

Wasn't Alexandre Moos an ok climber back in the day? 37 now though

 

[David Suro]

If Evans has no great support in the mountains to be a GC contender (and it appears he doesn't) then he could animate the race in the stages that have been largely unanimated for the past decade.

Watching the Tour has become a matter of:

Prologue - check out the new TT gear and see the riders

Flat Stages - lots of boring hours with exciting sprint finishes

Mountains - watch GC contenders and their teams control things until the ultimate climb, then see who summits the best

TT's - watch to see which contender that can climb can also put in a great performance

I hope this year will be a little different. Watching a 'dark hourse' contender attack on the first climb of a mountain stage and try to stay away would be cool. Watching a 'dark hourse' make the flat stages miserable for the other contenders would also be cool.

Who knows? Evans is in a place to do either of these things and truly make the race intereseting in areas where it has been a matter of 'riders logging miles' for the past decade or so.

Do they still have the 'most combative' classification? If so, that's a jersey worth going for!

 

[luckyboy]

I hope this year will be a little different. Watching a 'dark hourse' contender attack on the first climb of a mountain stage and try to stay away would be cool. Watching a 'dark hourse' make the flat stages miserable for the other contenders would also be cool.

I can't see anyone doing any of these things. Maybe Retirement Shack/Saxo Bank will pull hard on the cobbles to see if Contador falls, but I can't see Evans, let alone any other big name going away on the first mountain of the day (unless they've lost loads of time).

 

[BroDeal]

I know Horner's overall placing wasn't bad, but I never really saw him do much to help Evans during that Tour. I always think that those domestiques should help set a pace or do something for their leader, but Horner just seemed to ride with the lead group until he couldn't maintain it anymore. Granted I could be wrong as I'm just going by what I remember rather than looking any of this up.

Horner helped Evans, but the key is to look at what happened after Horner was dropped by the main contenders. Instead of glass cranking the rest of the stage so he would be as fresh as possible, he did his best to limit his losses. He was trying to place as high as he could because he needed the placing for contract negotiations for the next season. He also took a big salary cut to race in Europe, so he wanted the placing to help him get the money he thought he was worth.

 

[auscyclefan94]

T-mobile could care less about him as a GT rider
Lotto wasn't a 100% with him for his TDF attemps
Now BMC is "under a doping allegation".....
so I ask myself... Is Cadel Evans gonna have to do it all by himself? is there any place/team he could ever fit in? I really feel sorry for him.......

please opine

edited.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Yea, if the race is going to be animated by somebody not running according to formula, it is incredibly unlikely that Evans would be that man. It's only if he loses enough time on GC that he becomes a complete irrelevance that he'd be allowed to go anywhere (like Pellizotti last year). And while Evans is not the non-attacker he's sometimes characterised as, he does have a tendency to give up when disheartened - at no point did he attack Valverde after the puncture on Sierra Nevada, for example. He did try to get in breaks in the 2009 Tour though, to be fair to him, but that didn't work out.

Basically, it's not really in the character of somebody like Evans to be treating the mountain stages like Emanuele Sella in 2008, and even if it were, the other GC contenders would only let him do it once he's at least 20 minutes out of their way.

 

[Mambo95]

I think Evans is a rider who isn't too bothered about having teammates around him in the mountains. Sure he'd like them, but he's not dependant on them in the way that, for example, Armstrong, and to a lesser extent Schleck, seems to be.

He's said that he felt that Lotto seemed to lose faith in him after the 2008 Tour, and that's probably true. It certainly tallies with the opinion a lot of us amateur pundits who thought his best chance had passed. In 2009 Lotto probably turned their attentions more to the Belgians - Gilbert and van den Broeck - and I can't really blame them.

At BMC, not only are they fully 100% behind him, but they're relying on him to get ranking points. And that's how he wants to be seen by his team.

As to the lightweight BMC team. There's a lot of very young guys there. I say - give then a go, see how they do. Here in Britain, Cycle Sport did a supplement for the Giro with an article about the 1985 7-Eleven team. Those guys were all neo-pros with little Euro experience. Hampsten was on a one month contract. And yet they did really well. British readers will also be familiar with Alan Hansen's infamous quote "You'll never win anything with kids".