Cycling champion Cadel Evans takes aim at elusive national jersey for the final time

CADEL Evans begins the long goodbye to cycling in Ballarat tomorrow searching for one of the few things that has eluded him in his glittering road career — a green and gold national champion’s jersey.

Tour Down Under - Stage 3

CADEL Evans begins the long goodbye to cycling in Ballarat tomorrow searching for one of the few things that has eluded him in his glittering road career — a green and gold national champion’s jersey.

In 15 years as a professional road cyclist he remains the only Australian to win the Tour de France and world championship, yet the national title has escaped him.

After finishing second by one agonising bike length to Simon Gerrans last year, tomorrow at Buninyong on the outskirts of Ballarat, Evans has one last chance before he retires.

“Due to the program I’ve had in place for most of my career focused on winning Grand Tours, in particular the Tour de France, it has never been a realistic goal due to the time of year the nationals are held,” Evans said.

“This has changed in the final year or two of my career and as such I’m like any road cyclist in that I would love to win my national championship.

“But it’s not as simple as just wanting to win it, it’s an extremely hard thing to do and so many things need to go right. I will give it my best just the same as 2014 and let’s see what happens on the day.”

Having announced his impending retirement, tomorrow’s 183.6km road race is the first of three final races Evans will do before bowing out with the BMC Racing Team.

The others are the Tour Down Under in Adelaide from January 17-25 then his swan song at a race named in his honour, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, on February 1.

“I am approaching the final three races of my career as I would any other races I have contested previously and that is to perform at my optimal level,” Evans, 37, said.

“I am very motivated to achieve results certainly, but I also want to enjoy this time if that makes sense.

“Riding in a UCI WorldTour sanctioned race named after you will be an unusual but humbling experience, but once we line up at the start line it will be business as usual for me and the BMC Team.”

Although Gerrans is unable to defend his title tomorrow due to a broken collarbone, Evans argues it remains a big ask to beat the collective might of Orica-GreenEDGE compared to his three-man BMC team including young guns Rohan Dennis and Campbell Flakemore.

Tough, but not impossible, as Evans and Sky’s Richie Porte showed last year with podium finishes.

“The thing is Orica race to make us lose, when there’s (nine) of them that makes it difficult,” Evans said in the off-season.

“I don’t want to talk down my chances but you have to be realistic sometimes, if they’ve (got a big team) and we’re in three then obviously the odds are stacked against us.”

No matter what happens in Buninyong tomorrow, in Adelaide in a fortnight or Geelong next month, Evans will retire with no regrets.

“Most of all from a young age when I started riding I always thought that I want to step out of the sport without any regrets,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say it (retirement) was initially easy to accept but when I accepted that I’m going to stop racing at the high level, the reason (I did) was because I’m not going to actually have any regrets.

“I worked very hard, I had a fantastic opportunity to be a professional rider and worked with some fantastic people in the sport and made the most of all those opportunities.

“I had a lot of second places and a lot of fourth places over the years ... but overall I think I can go away from the sport on the second of February satisfied knowing I gave my sport everything.”

Despite winning the Giro del Trentino, two stages of the Tour of Utah and going top 10 in Strade Bianche, Pais Vasco and the Giro d’Italia in 2014, Evans said there was no real consideration for him continuing racing one-day events like the Ardennes or week-long stage races for BMC.

“I’d certainly given it some thought but my future lay in the fans of what my team at BMC wanted and they weren’t interested in that,” Evans told The Advertiser.

“I think they looked at my Giro result over three weeks and saw that I couldn’t perform there so I could do three weeks or ...

“And also on our team we do have riders who can do the one-week stage races, we have a pretty strong classics line up with (Philippe) Gilbert and so on and (Greg) Van Avermaet so I guess I wasn’t really a consideration for that sort of position.”

This off-season Evans has opened a wind farm at Snowtown in rural South Australia, been in the Holden Racing Team pits at a V8 Supercar race and stepped onto the hallowed turf at the MCG and Flemington. All while trying to find time to train.

“Because I’m not racing for very long (in my last year) I’m investing more time in my off-the-bike activities because obviously I’m not going to be a cyclist for very long,” he said. “So it’s time to think about things outside of racing.”

Evans will still be involved in cycling but as an ambassador for BMC, the bicycle manufacturer which sponsors his team.

“Less stress but still I’ll be on my bike most days,” Evans said.

“I get to be on my bike but without the expectations of winning the biggest races in the world.”

He will remain living overseas with his family which includes son Robel who goes to school in Switzerland.

“I think he’s (Robel) pretty sold on the fact that I’ll be able to ride with him every week as opposed to going away.”

In fact Evans is determined to keep pedalling into retirement because before long he might not be able to keep up with Robel who is showing quite the interest in bikes.

“The way he’s going, yes,” Evans jokes.

If Cadel Evans really has to retire, then surely the image of him riding side by side with his son and inspiring thousands of others to do the same is his final parting gift to the sport.

Originally published as Cycling champion Cadel Evans takes aim at elusive national jersey for the final time