Tour de France winner Cadel Evans eyes a return to the saddle - on a mountain bike

TOUR de France winner Cadel Evans is making a comeback — of sorts — and returning to his first true love, the mountain bike, after recovering from knee surgery last month.

15/1/16 - Tour de France champion Cadel Evans lead a BMC ride at 7am on Monday morning from near the Hilton Hotel. Photo Naomi Jellicoe

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CADEL Evans is making a comeback — of sorts — and returning to his first true love, the mountain bike, after recovering from knee surgery last month.

The Australian Tour de France winner arrived in Adelaide on Sunday night for the TDU and on Monday morning ventured out for one of his first rides since an operation to repair a damaged ligament in his knee in December.

Evans was able to continue riding with the longstanding knee complaint during his professional road career but with plans to contest mountain bike events in 2016, he required surgery to secure the joint’s lateral stability.

The 38-year-old retired from professional cycling after finishing third in last year’s Tour Down Under and fifth in the Great Ocean Road Race named in his honour.

Now working as a brand ambassador for BMC, he says he plans to “participate” in some mountain bike events this year ... but anyone who knows Evans will attest that “once a racer, always a racer”.

Evans went to the 1996 and 2000 Olympics on a mountain bike, and won the overall mountain bike world cup in 1998 and 1999 before switching to the road, where he became world champion and a Tour de France winner.

His approach to the sport is much different these days.

“Now I appreciate it (mountain biking) more because I don’t have to take risks on any of the downhills, I don’t have to be with the best guys in the world, I just go and enjoy it,” Evans told News Corp.

“Now I stop and take a photo of the views and put it on Twitter or something.

“I raced at the top level in two sports - I was there and I dedicated my life to be at the top level, now I’ve done that, it’s about being in the racing, being with people, enjoying the atmosphere and taking time to appreciate everything that as a concentrated (athlete) I wasn’t able to.

“Hanging out in the coffee shop, talking with everyone and smelling the roses — now I can go back and do all that.

“When I was a racer I had a window of opportunity to be an athlete, my thing was to make the most of that to get the best results I could.

“Now I come to the races, I don’t have to be on time for the start or think about training and recovery.”

Evans said one of his biggest satisfactions was seeing people find their way into cycling or rediscover their passion for the sport.

“I was just riding (this morning) with Kate, who started riding a year ago, I’m really happy to help people enjoy cycling more, whether they’re new to the sport or been in it for years. I feel like it’s my role to continue to promote the sport,” he said.

“What I really like is when people come back to the sport, maybe they rode as a teenager, then they come back and they lose 5 or 10kg and I always ask ‘how do you feel?’ and they say ‘fantastic, I’ve never felt so good’.”

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