Tour de France - Cadel Whines and Implies Some Dope Use?

If the group had managed to catch Sastre, Frank would've shot off the front as soon as contact was made and Andy and Carlos would've sat up.




I think this was the craziest part. As it turns out we now know how crappy Frank did on the TT, If Evans had chased Sastre and let frank shoot off the front when they caught sastre he could have potentially won.

If i were frank i think i would be the most bitter, his interview after that stage... man both the schlecks looked heartbroken.

I personally almost feel like Andy rode better that Frank or Sastre, can't wait till he gets older. Could you imagine if instead of setting a pace he had a team working for him and just pulled a Sastre on the last 10 k of all the mountain stages? I bet he would have put time into alot of the GC guys.

In my opinion there is a big change that schelck was waiting for Sastre.

I think this was the craziest part. As it turns out we now know how crappy Frank did on the TT, If Evans had chased Sastre and let frank shoot off the front when they caught sastre he could have potentially won.

If i were frank i think i would be the most bitter, his interview after that stage... man both the schlecks looked heartbroken.

I personally almost feel like Andy rode better that Frank or Sastre, can't wait till he gets older. Could you imagine if instead of setting a pace he had a team working for him and just pulled a Sastre on the last 10 k of all the mountain stages? I bet he would have put time into alot of the GC guys.

Andy got dropped like a rock early in the Pyrenees.

This is about the only situation when I couldn't care if a rider was doping - anything to prevent the whingeing apology for a sportsman from winning. Evan's behaviour throughout was a disgrace - why wasn't he arrested for punching out at all and sundry?

I think you're reading too much into Cadel's comments.

... Brad

re: all of you guys that think evans should have attacked more in the mountains.

hahaha. csc had three guys in every mountain stage. go back and watch the footage. andy's only job was to hunt those attacks down. remember when menchov crashed while attacking? who was chasing him down? andy. you think that if cadel would have attacked, that it would be any different. he was marked by csc the whole time.

to those that understand racing, what happened on d'huez was no surprise. almost anyone could have told you that csc was going to send either schleck or sastre up the road. then it is the responsibility for the other gc guys to respond. if they do burn their matches to catch the attack, then the other csc rider goes on the counter.

when the field is as evenly matched in the climbs as the tour was this year, you simply won't see many attacks prior to the 2k to go point unless it is planned in advance. also, this puts much more emphasis on strategy and team tactics. seeing as csc was the only team with multiple riders (ag2r had two riders, but they were 9th and 10th overall), they had a very big advantage in the climbs. if cadel would have attacked, andy would have dragged carlos and his brother up to him, then popped. the result: one less csc guy, but evans would be spent while sastre, schleck, and the rest of the gc contenders still good to go. evans really did the best he could considering the strength of csc and lack of assitance from his team.

iirc, cadel was complaining in march about lotto not resigning chris horner to assist popovych. looks like he may have been right on that one.

speaking of whinning ive just been reading this thread

I don't get all the Cadel hatred on this board. Seems like the folks that actually know him think he's a pretty good guy. He rode the race he had the best chance of winning and it didn't pan out for him. It happens. I actually enjoyed watching the tactics play out. Plus I didn't see anything in that article that looked like he was accusing anyone of anything. MAYBE a little whining about his team not being strong. But there is certainly truth in that and his analysis of why he didn't win seemed spot on. It might not make him popluar with his teammates though. I might have worded it differently though. Of course, if I had just ridden over 2k miles in 21 stages I probably would not be able to put together a coherent though, if I was actually still living...

Not pickin' on anyone. I'm just confused and don't understand all the animosity.

Yup. Cadel chose to mark Menchov in the mountains, figuring he was the #1 danger man. He also probably figured he could give Sastre a certain amount of rope, and it appeared that 2 minutes was that amount. Had he chased Sastre down, perhaps F. Schleck and Menchov would have attacked and then where would he be? I think he played it the best he could under the circumstances. You can't chase everything down without some help. He lost the Tour to a rider who took the right opportunity at the right time in the mountains and who then rode the TT of his life. It's easy to play Monday morning quarterback, I give credit to both Evans and Sastre (and CSC) for coming up with a plan and executing it as best they could. Evans could gain a ton of credibility if he simply said "I lost to a better man and better strategy!"

Well stated. Suzie Green, thanks for contributing to the TdF forum, I've enjoyed your posts and insights into the 2008 TdF.

Well stated. Suzie Green, thanks for contributing to the TdF forum, I've enjoyed your posts and insights into the 2008 TdF.

Hey likewise! As a tour junkie, now going through withdrawl pains, I've read about 98% of what's been posted here too. I've learned a lot from you all. Some people are more insightful than others, but it's all good! Thanks for the compliment...hope to read more of your posts here as well. :)

re: all of you guys that think evans should have attacked more in the mountains.

hahaha. csc had three guys in every mountain stage. go back and watch the footage. andy's only job was to hunt those attacks down. remember when menchov crashed while attacking? who was chasing him down? andy. you think that if cadel would have attacked, that it would be any different. he was marked by csc the whole time.

to those that understand racing, what happened on d'huez was no surprise. almost anyone could have told you that csc was going to send either schleck or sastre up the road. then it is the responsibility for the other gc guys to respond. if they do burn their matches to catch the attack, then the other csc rider goes on the counter.

when the field is as evenly matched in the climbs as the tour was this year, you simply won't see many attacks prior to the 2k to go point unless it is planned in advance. also, this puts much more emphasis on strategy and team tactics. seeing as csc was the only team with multiple riders (ag2r had two riders, but they were 9th and 10th overall), they had a very big advantage in the climbs. if cadel would have attacked, andy would have dragged carlos and his brother up to him, then popped. the result: one less csc guy, but evans would be spent while sastre, schleck, and the rest of the gc contenders still good to go. evans really did the best he could considering the strength of csc and lack of assitance from his team.

iirc, cadel was complaining in march about lotto not resigning chris horner to assist popovych. looks like he may have been right on that one.

+1

Evans isn't an attacking rider. That doesn't mean he shouldn't have marked Sastre. Andy Schleck was a non-issue. At about 10 minutes down on GC and a lousy time trialer to boot, Evans didn't have to worry about him. Frank? It's easy in hindsight to note that Sastre was the bigger danger but Evans had to make a choice. Theoretically his team should have anticipated this situation before the stage ever started and looked at who really was the bigger threat. Maybe they did and just made a mistake.

Perhaps
evans best strategy would have been to just to to the front and set a hard pace himself, similar to what Sastre did. Maybe Sastre jumps him for the win but probably doesn't get much time.

Everything though would've hinged on an expectation that Evans would be able to take more than 30 seconds on the time trial. Given that performance, I doubt Evans would have anticipated his necessary margin being so small.

Perhaps evans best strategy would have been to just to to the front and set a hard pace himself, similar to what Sastre did. Maybe Sastre jumps him for the win but probably doesn't get much time.

Yeah, but if Evans put even more effort into keeping up with Sastre in Stage 17, how much less energy would he have had in the time trial? It's not an easy answer, I think either way, Cadel would have been overwhelmed.

I've no hate for Cadel, but I would prefer to see a rider put his stamp on the race
(to paraphrase Phil, or Paul can't remember which). I also think that Cadel should have
marked Sastre as the real threat and not the Schlek brothers based on their time trials.
It was very interesting that Vande Velde talked about Sastre's time trialing basically saying
that Carlos isn't a bad time trialist, not top 5 or 10 usually but consistently less than a minute
back on the eventual winner. All year CSC has been saying that he (Sastre) worked on TT skills
it should have been a red flag for Lotto.

all in all a pretty good tour.

Marty

As an Aussie it's a little hard not to get riled up reading all the Cadel bashing in this forum. But as the saying goes 'opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one'. So without getting upset i'll try to keep this inteligent.
I can completely understand that Cadel may not be everyones favourite rider come the start of the tour, but I find it difficult that anyone who rides a bike, cannot admire what he has achieved in his 4 tours so far. He was the overwhelming favourite this year, which is never an easy burden to carry. On top of that he is vying to be the first Australian to win the tour. We Aussies are much like you (Americans) when it comes to supporting our athletes, we have very high standards and expectations no matter what sport it is and as a country of some 20 million people have a rather well established track record in many international events and championships worldwide.
If you listened to the entire interview that the og post comments came from, he in no way eluded to anyone doping. He was just supprised that considering how good he felt for the entire TT that he made up so little time. Another point to consider is that his strategy is not his own, each team pays people to calculate the stragety for the GC guys, so he leaves that sort of thing up to the powers that be. All things considered and without the benifit of 20 20 hindsight, it would have been difficult to plan a better stragety for Cadel against a team as strong as CSC this year.
You have to remember that his strength is time trialing and not climbing. I also think Popovic has alot to answer for as he was purley drafted to ride for Cadel and as far as I saw did nothing of the sort.
IMO Cadel rode a great tour, with a strong strategy but just came up a little short in the TT when it counted. Thats racing, and there can only be one winner and from all the interviews I saw Cadel was gracious in defeat and fully acknowledged the fact he was beaten by the better man and team. He's a bike racer for gods sake, of course he was dissapointed. He's there to win and nearly did again, you'd be dissapointed to. But as a racer you dust yourself off and live to fight another day. I question the validaty of anyones negative comments about a guy like Cadel Evens as a bike racer? Wake up to yourself and stop being such an arm chair hack, what have you achieved recenty???

For me a guy like Cungeo was way more dissapointing than than most and your boy, Vande Velde was a real standout, as was Bernard Kohl. I find it funny that a few people in this thread and others talk up Andy as a future champion without metioning Kohl, his TT was fantastic as was his whole tour for a relatively unknown rider.
I certainly agree without doubt that for guys like Sastre and Evans that this year was probably their last real chance at snaring that elusive Yellow jersey in Paris and feel for a guy like Levi as it was probably his last chance to and he didn't even get to the line because of politics. Next year with AC back and the Shleck boys with another year under their belts and a guy like Kohl showing real guts in the mountains and some TT ing ability will be an entirely different tour.

On the doping issue I think it's worth metioning that the testing seems to be working and I think as fans and bike racers we all hope this is the case, our sport needs to overcome this doping tag and I hope we get nearer with every cheat that gets caught. Ricardo Ricco was a real dissapointment for mine as he clearly had alot of ability without the dope.

Any who, I couldn't be more proud of Cadels performance as an Aussie cycling fan and most of all can't wait for the olympics to start to take up where the tour left off (need the fix from some where). Congrats should go out to all that strive to do their best on the worlds biggest stage no matter where they finish, and trivial critisisms posted on forums the world over from those experts that shall remain nameless should be read for what they are, rubish. Because lets face it, who are they anyway? No one!

Who gives a **** about Cadel, walking around like he owns the tour with Lance's ex bodyguard in tow, running into his own 'Cadel' mini bus while the rest of the team slum it, giving reporters grief. Armstrong did it because he could, he is a legend, 7 tour wins, What the f**k has Cadel done.......NOTHING!!! Take your mood swings and piss off back to mountain biking, at least you might win something...

Sastre was always CSC's best shot. When he was behind on the GC at Huez, it made most sense for him to go. It was an obvious move, because Sastre is not a terrible TT rider.

Who gives a **** about Cadel, walking around like he owns the tour with Lance's ex bodyguard in tow, running into his own 'Cadel' mini bus while the rest of the team slum it, giving reporters grief. Armstrong did it because he could, he is a legend, 7 tour wins, What the f**k has Cadel done.......NOTHING!!! Take your mood swings and piss off back to mountain biking, at least you might win something...Shetland is famous for the achievements of its racing cyclists.

and the virgin has crcodile dundee as his avatar! now that's hard, man.

cadel may have armstrong's bodyguard in tow (provided by his team, not himself) but he doesn't have any of the doping suspicions that armstrong had: testosterone usage (with a 'medical exemption' perhaps)? EPO before it was detectable? Dr Ferrari? etc etc. and he basically only raced one race a year.

armstrong was hardly the most convivial of press animals either, much of the time.

I think this was the craziest part. As it turns out we now know how crappy Frank did on the TT, If Evans had chased Sastre and let frank shoot off the front when they caught sastre he could have potentially won....

but this is why i think everything went exactly like each person should have played it. as long as carlos felt good, i'll bet csc wanted him to take the first shot at cadel. if he could get away and stay away, he could make up enough time to be a factor in the time trial. which is what happened. and the place to do that was the bottom of the l'alpe, because it's the steepest part. they made it as hard as possible for cadel to follow carlos' wheel. and if evans did, then they would hit him with frank and take their chances on saturday. cadel, knowing that carlos would probably go first, was going to sit in no matter who jumped. if frank goes first, so what? everyone knew his TT abilities were poor. cadel would have let him get a 4 minute lead. sastres was a bigger threat, but the fact that he hit cadel at the steepest part of the climb prevented evans from chasing him down, so he was reduced to minimizing his losses. then the schlecks were slowing things down even more on the climb. i thought the final climb was fought very smartly by all concerned. too bad somebody has to lose...

Who gives a **** about Cadel, walking around like he owns the tour with Lance's ex bodyguard in tow, running into his own 'Cadel' mini bus while the rest of the team slum it, giving reporters grief. Armstrong did it because he could, he is a legend, 7 tour wins, What the f**k has Cadel done.......NOTHING!!! Take your mood swings and piss off back to mountain biking, at least you might win something...

More people than give the preverbial about you, thats for sure.
What has cadel done you ask? Well, lots actually. Alot more than you. Who are you anyway.
Ah thats right no one anyone gives a **** about. Sucks to be you.

It's extremely difficult to attack, when "his team was never there for him on the big mountain stages."

He's getting attacked and hanging on. Something he did fairly well.

Good grief.

By the way, those of you that have a copy of "Overcoming", go back and watch that and look at the Sastre that's in that documentary (the one Riis keeps picking on because of the way he behaves) and the one that won the Tour. Big difference.

For those that are being critical of Evans "sitting in"...Sastre essentially did the same thing until D'Huez. He picked his spot and went. You win with your head, not your testosterone.

Maybe some cat 4's and 5's can learn from that.

I recall seeing Sastre fetching waterbottles during the Alpe d'Huez stage. I'm fairly certain Evans was spared that strenuous, energy draining activity.

Not sure I agree. No one is going to come out and say doping - it's always a sly reference.

I remember after the Giro, there was a rider talking about Basso being from Mars or something like that. Everyone pretty much understood that as a circumspect way of saying Basso doped.

That was Gilberto Simoni, I believe the term used was "extraterrestrial" and of course his words proved to be prophetic.

Yeah Sastre attacked meanwhile the rest of his team controlled the field. It's not like he made up his mind on his own - the order went out and off he went.

I don't understand the hate for Evans. The guy seems really quiet, and hung in seemingly on his own all tour because his team was too weak to help him out... and he almost won. I found his pretty much solo performance on the Alpe stage impressive as well. I don't think I ever saw him actually being pulled by a teammate.


There was no order. Sastre as I understand it informed Frank Schleck that he wanted to attack, probably out of respect for Schleck at the time wearing the yellow jersey, Schleck gave the okay and the rest is Tour history. It may have been one of many possible strategiesy that Riis had plotted out before hand
but as far as I know and from what I've read there was no "order".

The dislike for Evans is combination of his bizarre off the bike behavior over the course of this years Tour
and his take no risks, wheel following riding style. He cries that he can't climb with the best climbers and that he has to make up his losses in the time trials and yet he's always there or close by with the best climbers rarily losing the time that he implies. The excuse his fans give is that he's a time trialist who can climb when he's actually a climber who has worked hard on his time trialling until it is an asset. His public
degradation of his team for the 2nd consecutive year is a excellent example of his lack of character. As stated often things like this are left to talked about to your team managers and DS not to the media. Its quite easy to select an interview from one site (Velonews) if it supports your argument and then to ignore
contrary quotes from others. He whines, he makes excuses, he buckles under the pressure of high expectations with bizarre behavior between stages. He has talent just not much class.

Sastre has class and is well deserving of his Tour victory. I can think of no other rider in the top twenty more deserving. Bravo!

I don't think you guys understand Cadel. His strategy to win is to stay close on the mountains and "attack" in the ITT. You won't see him attack in the hills because it isn't his strength, he'll redline, get caught and then blow the TT. His job is to stay close and make up the "hopefully" little time lost in the TT. Turns out it didn't work for him.

BTW, I also read the comments as a "what's wrong with me" than a "they must be doping."

You obviously don't realize how ridiculous the use of "attack" and "time trial" in the same sentence sounds.

You obviously don't realize how ridiculous the use of "attack" and "time trial" in the same sentence sounds.

You obviously don't understand that the use of "" around the word attack is intended to acknowledge that fact. Plain and simple...an attack is a move designed to get away and gain time. Cadel's move to gain time is to do a better ITT than the others. So in that sense, it is an "attack" but it is not an attack.:thumb:

There have been alot of interesting points brought up here, many about modern team strategy, but this about sums up why about half way through the tour I started to root for "anyone but Evans" even though I was a fan when he was a young fast mountainbiker:

...his public
degradation of his team for the 2nd consecutive year is a excellent example of his lack of character ... He whines, he makes excuses, he buckles under the pressure of high expectations with bizarre behavior between stages.

He has talent just not much class.

And why I'm stoked that it was Sastre:



Sastre has class and is well deserving of his Tour victory. I can think of no other rider in the top twenty more deserving. Bravo!

Why? See:

"Meanwhile, Tour winner Carlos Sastre attended the race and spent part of his day visiting children in the cancer ward at a local hospital. (http://www.velonews.com/article/81049)"

He's definitely implying that Sastre and others were doping.

"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?"'
That's a very dangerous and misleading implication.

What a load of bollocks, he's not implying what you seem to think that he is, your obviously reading way too much into his statement.

As for whining and whinging, there is more of that going on in this thread by some posters than Cadel has ever done.

Found some quotes from Cadel and I'm very dissapointed in him. He's definitely implying that Sastre and others were doping.

"Sastre's ride in the time trial today for me was a real surprise," Evans said after finishing the 53-kilometre ride from Cerilly to Saint-Amand-Montrond in seventh place.
...
"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?"'

That's a very dangerous and misleading implication.

Oh yeah, that's clearly implication of doping. The guy couldn't possibly be implying that the other riders were having a great day, or that he'd underestimated people. Clearly!

Talk about dangerous and misleading implications.... :rolleyes: