July July Tempranillo Pie

[Bierzo Baggie]

This was the Tour de France I’ve enjoyed most since the days of Marco Pantani but for rather different reasons.

One of the headlines in the Spanish sports press summed it up in four words: “Ganó el más feo,” ..the ugliest won. This was a gutsy, courageous, tenacious, bloody minded a performance as ever I’ve seen. Evans came back from the dead twice in two days, in Galibier and Alpe d’Huez (where he ended up throwing his bike in a ditch). Nobody seemed to help him, nobody waited for him, he just gritted his teeth and plodded on and on...on these tough Alpine slopes Cadel Evans, an enigmatic, unspectacular sort of rider won his first and almost certainly his only Tour de France at the age of 34.

Behind him in the final classification were the Schleck brothers, Basso, Cunego, Samuel Sanchez, all riders tipped as future Tour de France winners on account of pure “talent”. And of course there was Contador, proving that winning two big ones in the same season is almost impossible in modern day cycling. Cadel held these supposedly more talented riders on their terrain, grinding away at the front; it was like Stoke City beating Barcelona.

A runningcommentary.net sort of guy I’d say.

Ok, I’m going a bit overboard, but everybody agreed that nobody deserved this Tour more than Mr Cadel Evens. He now officially joins Kylie and Rolf Harris as my three favourite Aussies.

And is it just me or is Thomas Voeckler the spitting image of Bono?