Reckless P-platers have often thrown bottles at Cadel Evans when he’s training along the Great Ocean Road near his home town of Barwon Heads, Victoria. Maybe they’ll think twice now, just in case that anonymous lycra-clad figure on the road is a Tour de France winner.
Evans’ Tour de France triumph represents a massive day in Australian sport. Bigger than the America’s Cup victory in 1983. Bigger than anything Pat Cash, Greg Norman or Lleyton Hewitt ever did. Bigger than any of Ian Thorpe’s swims and bigger, yes, than Cathy Freeman’s 400m run in Sydney.
This was not just a victory in the world’s largest annual sporting event, but a victory for everything that we value in Australian sport.
It was a victory for grit and courage: Did you see the man’s face on those climbs in the Alps? Did you really take a long hard look at that grimace? It was more than a grimace of pain. It was a grimace of intent. Through open mouth and bared teeth, Evans seemed to be saying “you can not break me, I will not be beaten.” And they didn’t. And he wasn’t.
It was a victory for persistence. Twice before, in 2007 and 2008, Evans had finished second in this race. In 2009 and 2010 he was dogged by bad luck and injuries and finished well down the standings. The dream was over, or so it seemed. Bookies had the 34 year old at odds of $34 this year. Here’s hoping they’re all broke this morning.
It was a victory for strategy and tactics. Purists have previously criticised Evans for failing to produce big, ballsy moves a la Armstrong and Contador. This year, Evans was ruthless when required. His 11.5km climb at the front of the pack on the Col du Galibier on Stage 18 was incredible. His wild 100 km/h downhill chase on Stage 19 was breathtaking.
Evans won only one stage this year, and that by half a bike wheel, but he was centre stage throughout the event. If the 2011 Tour was a French novel, he was Jean Valjean. If it was a film, he was Depardieu. His red shirt only changed to yellow on the last day, but Cadel Evans owned the 2011 Tour. Like Glen Boss on Makybe Diva, he timed his run to perfection and was in front when it counted.
But above all, this was a victory for playing-by-the-rules and clean-living in a sport rife with dodgy sportsmanship and drugs. A competitor once said Evans competes on Weet-Bix and water”. The only thing he neglected to mention was the occasional glass of red which Evans routinely consumes in the evening between stages. For medicinal purposes, of course.
Many of us sports-loving Australians are not yet fully-fledged converts to professional cycling. That’s because we don’t get the back story. Many of us are unaware of our rich history in this sport, as detailed so eloquently and passionately by Liberal MP Kevin Andrews yesterday.
Sport, after all, is nothing without narrative. If you don’t know the history of Australian Rules football, or the subtleties of the game, then a Carlton/Collingwood game is just 36 blokes running around and crashing into each other aimlessly in front of 90,000 lunatics.
To many of us, Le Tour has long been just as mystifying. It has been a French film without subtitles. We might have had a vague idea of the plot, but we just didn’t get what was happening in that peloton and frankly, it was all too foreign for us to get excited about.
That’s changed, thanks to Cadel and thanks to the excellent work of broadcaster SBS, whose chief commentator Phil Liggett deserves to be spoken of as highly as Richie Benaud.
Thanks to Liggett, co-commentator Paul Sherwen, anchor Mike Tomalaris and others, SBS has made us all couch experts over the past few years and especially these enthralling past three weeks - even if at times you had to wade through a Gabriel Gaté cheese fondue first.
We now know that a domestique is not a saucy French maid. We understand the difference between a genuine breakaway and a futile breakaway undertaken with the cynical intention of getting a team sponsor some valuable TV time. And the more you understand, the more addictive this whole crazy dance becomes.
There was a great moment on the gruelling climb up the 21 switchbacks to Alpe d’Huez in Stage 19. Last year’s winner Alberto Contador had bolted away. Soon-to-be race leader Andy Schleck asked Cadel if he wanted to help him climb – a move which would help both of them prevent Contador making up his four minutes worth of arrears.
“No thanks,” Cadel said, and so he bloody well should have. All week, Schleck had been working with his brother Frank against Evans. The lion had been trying to eat the mouse all week. Now, the lion wanted help removing a thorn from his paw, and the mouse said “no way mate”.
This wasn’t bad sportsmanship. It was payback. Evans knew Contador was too far back. He knew he just had to stay with Schleck, go over the line with him, remain 57 seconds down, then gobble up that time in the time trial. And wasn’t it unbelievably sweet watching things pan out exactly that way on the streets of Grenoble in the time trial. Man, did Evans make that bike hum as Schleck’s form visibly disintegrated.
When Australian won that America’s Cup in 1983, we all understood that we’d come back from an impossible position, and that we had the technical whizzbangery of the winged keel and the backing of Bondy. But no one except hardened sailors understood the race tactics.
This time around, we more or less got everything. As the tour de chateaux and tour des églises turned into a fair dinkum bike race, the code slowly cracked. And that’s half the reason why this win feels so special.
The other reason it feels so good is that Cadel Evans is such an admirable person. He’s a quirky kind of guy, chatty and with a raft of unusual interests which include everything from the plight of the Tibetan people to country music.
Evans’ Australianised Italian wife Chiara wife is a classical pianist and there is a large classical piano in their living room. Once, when asked what he’d change about his wife to make her more Australian, Cadel replied:
“Are you kidding? Why would you take a beautiful blonde Italian woman and try and change anything?”
Great answer. Why change her? And why change himself or his way of riding? This former Sydney Olympic mountain biker is his own man. He’s proudly Australian but outward looking. He’s private, and no attention seeker, but is incredibly generous with his extremely limited time. What more could any of us want from a sporting champ? Or from a prominent Australian in any sphere of life?
So regardless of whether or not your boss has given you the day off today as Hawkey did in ’83, enjoy this moment. Savour it. It hasn’t felt this good being an Australia for a long, long while. As usual, it’s taken someone from a million miles outside the realm of politics to make us feel that way.
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