epobuster

just unable to handle the pressure? With his lashing out at all and sundry, his poor TT performance, and lack of grace in defeat with his (not very) veiled hints at Sastre doping, does he need serious psychological help, or is he simply a mental weakling destined never to win the Tour?

By the way, in my country we have a comedian called Lee Evans. I don't know if they're related, but he looks just like Cadel, has the same hyperactive and highly strung personality, and also sounds as if he's been inhaling helium. They're both figures of fun, but in different ways.

spoke50

Must be an Austrialian thing, because Mcewen seems to show the same kind of arrogant class when he opens his mouth too.

Flak

McEwen gets a pass because, well, the dude backed up the talk. Guy was vicious in a sprint.

Cadel, not so much. I would have liked him to put his better foot forward considering he was representing Australia. Had he not been a compatriot, i doubt i would have been pulling for him to win.

bac

Bingo.

... Brad

Parsnip

As the tour wore on, i was cheering for anyone but Evans - hes a whining, boring to watch jumped up little weirdo - yes his team offered him no support, to be honest, if i was in the lotto team, i wouldnt help him either - badmouth your team Cadel, good motivational technique....

People who say it was good tactics limiting his losses on D'Huez - it may have been the case, but it was boring as sin watching him sucking wheel for 21 stages - surprised he can tt at all without a wheel to follow.

Glad he didnt win, hope Astana is back next year, and the Schleck's both hit good form so that Cadel "Face like an arse don't touch my dog or ill cut your head off" Evans doesn't win, and i can laugh at him some more by watching youtube interviews.

veloGeezer

we all expect these guys to be machines, like robots

Have you ever stopped to consider what deep fatigue does to your moods? It makes you cranky, to say the least.

He has had to ride with the hopes of a continent on his shoulders while CSC sicked the dogs on him.

Clearly, he had to face some dissappointment, too.

but the fact of it is that your emotions are like the guages on a race car. When you are not meeting some of your basic needs (like rest, for instance) the wheels start to come off and that will first manifest itself in your emotions.

so that the guy came unglued to me just says he gave it all he had. Give him a few days to come to terms with things.

merlinextraligh

Mckewan's comments on sunday about Evans were quite measured I thought. Evans blames the lack of team support for losing the Yellow, and Mckewen certainly has some frustration in getting no support himself.

When asked about what's been said e Mckewen essentially said "its been a long 3 weeks everyone's tired, we need to give it some time." Under the circumstances, and considering who it was coming from, I thought it was a very measured response.

veloGeezer

now while I'm for giving him a pass on being a jackass, I do agree that watching him race is like watching paint dry. I'v never been a fan of his for that reason.

veloGeezer

he also said they knew going in they weren't as strong as CSC. When he said the strongest man won, I thought that was really telling of what the mood in the team was. He definitely was not saying what he wanted to really say, though. That was a very measured response. Almost diplomatic.

hoodooguru

If Evans was on a team like CSC he would have won going away. He is 100 % right about that. Ol' Cadel he's alright in my book. It kills me when I read about how he is boring, he isn't a pure climber and isn't any more boring than Levi, Ullrich, Vandevelde, Indurain etc. Tempo climbers all. Cadel actually took a few digs this tour. The real question is where the hell was Popovych? Isolated all tour even worse than last year IMO Cadel was beaten down by the final ITT whereas Sastre was fresh after being protected and out of the headlines for 2.5 weeks.
Second place, yeah he can't handle the pressure. He is kind of a dick though.

mcoomer

I don't know if he's a dick or not but I do want to see the eventual winner of the Tour work for it, particularly in the mountain stages. Attack your closest rivals, put them on their heels. If Silence-Lotto's strategy was minimize your losses in the mountains by playing it safe and staying as close to your rival's wheel as you can because you're a better time trialist it obviously didn't work. He may have been put in that position because of the lack of real support that he was getting from his team but it made it easy for CSC to isolate and attack him in the mountains and get a big enough lead over him that the TT didn't matter.

As for Robbie McEwen, that dude can say what he wants to because he can ride like nobody else. When he was penalized for digging his head into the shoulder of another guy to get position during a sprint he was asked why he thought he'd been punished and his answer was "Cause they know they can't beat me!" To make his point he went out on the next stage and won it then sat up and gave us the fingers pointing to himself to make sure everyone got a good look at him. Plus, last year during the second stage (I think) he had a mechanical, was off the back of the peloton right at the end of the stage, his team rode him back into the peloton and he came out of nowhere to win the stage. That was quite possibly the best bit of riding I've ever seen. Maybe Cadel should be taking notes.

bac

You are correct - their strategy did not work.

However, almost every expert in the world expected this strategy to work given Cadel's ITT ability. You've got to play the odds - which SL did. They just got a below average TT out of Evans.

... Brad

Flak

I think he was just beat down after being hammered again and again by the dream team of CSC. They always had a fresh guy on him, making him work. Had he tried to attack we all know they would have just marked him, let him use his energy, and go back to business as usual when he gave it up....grinding him down. By the time the TT came around....his legs were toast.

Perfect example of a strong rider being no match for a strong team.

cjbruin

Uh...he was pointing at the logo on his jersey because the team supported him so well on that stage and gave him a perfect lead-out.

rustguard

man you guys are way too hard on him, lighten up and act your IQ's, at least he talks from his heart instead of putting on a diplomatic press conference. you guys just love sales people.

Suzie Green

Exactly, and couple that with a better TT from Sastre than almost anyone expected. And Popovych disappointed as well, he could have been more visible alongside Evans on some of the mountain stages. In the one stage where Popo did appear to have decent legs, he ended up in a break in which the tactics didn't benefit Evans at all.

It's a long race...you can't expect these guys to be 100% diplomatic all the time. I'm sure the constant interviews by the media can really start to wear on a rider after a while. Give things a few weeks to calm down.

crash66

All the other GC guys responded to those attacks as well (they might not have kept up necessarily, but they responded with the effort), and they didn't seem to fade in the TT. Menchov and VDV come to mind....neither of those guys had any real help in the mountains either.

Matt888

Who was it doing the chase up L' Alp? Because it sure looked like Evans to me??
And how far did VDV and Menchov end up behind Cadel overall??
I guess your right, Cadel wasn't putting in any effort what so ever.
I fnd it amusing that Cadel gets called boring, then in same breath critisised for speaking his mind (and the truth) to the media.
Deni Menchov, now there is a barrel of laughs and insight when it come to the media**********?

crash66

Oh wait, you're from Australia? Never mind then.

Matt888

Dolomiti

How much does drafting matter when going up 8% grades on l'Alpe?

marin1

I don't know, I've heard there are tougher climbs in Wisconsin

harlond

I dislike Evans, but I think he rode a strong and intelligent tour. It seems to me like SL tried to win the tour on the cheap. They had Horner and could have added Popo, but instead they chose to substitute one for the other, leaving them (and Evans) with no margin for unfavorable contingencies. I might prefer that Evans be more diplomatic about his team, but I've come around to the view that he is pointing out the nearly inevitable consequences of a strategy chosen not by him, but by SL management. IMO, that's where the blame ought to go for any perceived failures on Evans' part, and I don't fault him for pointing the finger at them.

Some have pointed out that VdV and Menchov also had no help in the high mountains, nor Kohl for that matter. But VdV and Kohl had already exceeded expectations simply by being in the picture, so I don't think they had nearly the weight of pressure that Evans bore. Menchov, whose team pursues a similar strategy, might have faced such pressure, but he had pretty much eliminated it by the time of the ITT, when his chances for the victory were gone and for the podium nearly gone. Not to mention that none of them crashed as badly as Evans did.

So anyway, while I think Evans is a wheelsucker and a whinger, it seems to me that he made the very best of a situation that he didn't create.

That said, he should lose the dog.

Rohc

For what its worth I am from Australia and as much as I believe Cadel did the best he could under the circumstances, he better find some charisma pretty quickly. The guy is just plain boring!!!!!

TheKillerPenguin

So, Cadel should attack uphill because it'd entertain you guys. Even though the dude isn't a pure climber. You don't like him cuz he's boring and a bit high strung after riding his ass off for 3 weeks.

How many of you race?