Crunch time for Evans

20 July 2008 | 16:48 - Saddle Sores - Jesse Fink

My kingdom for anyone who can describe what is going through Cadel Evans's mind right now as the Tour enters the big mountains.

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Not that my kingdom is much. A rumpled bed. Some books. Half a watermelon in the fridge. But a sports fan, even a fair-weather cycling one, couldn't ask for much more than the scenario going into Stage 15, Embrun to Prato-Nevoso, the first 183km of what looms as some serious legend-defining days for the Australian who is still clinging on to that nervous one-second lead.

A chokingly nervous one-second lead, mind, over Frank Schleck, who is an accomplished climber in his own right, having won a stage in the Alpe d'Huez in 2006 over Damiano Cunego (currently 14th). His brother Andy, who also rides for CSC, is back in 20th place and was anointed the pre-race favourite for this stage that ventures well (and rather spectacularly) into the Piedmont region of Italy and busts a gasket on the hors catégorie Col Agnel at 2744 metres, 500 metres higher than Kosciuszko after just 58 kilometres of riding.

Danish outfit CSC, which also has Spaniard Carlos Sastre currently lying in sixth, 1:28 behind Evans, is going all-out for a stage win tonight and my fellow SBS blogger John Flynn has flagged the widespread concerns over Evans's team Silence-Lotto, which he's not sure has "the hardware for an all-out firefight on the Alpine slopes" up against CSC.

In the latest issue of the American cycling magazine Pro Cycling, writer and cyclist Daniel Friebe calls the run-in to Prato-Nevoso "death by bicycle". The pace will breakneck from the start to reach the col and set up the platform for a fly to the finish line. This is no job for the fainthearted.

There's a great passage in Graeme Fife's book Tour de France about what's required to win – or even keep up – in the mountains. "No rider, not even the strongest, can match the natural fluency of the gifted climbers. When the pace accelerates on to the mountain and the high-flyers mount like weightless creatures and leave the rest of the field trailing with shaky legs and bursting with lungs, the men with any ambition have to hang on by raw power and unshakeable self belief; or lose."

Fortunately for Australia, Evans is tougher than the bullbar on a Top End ute so it's worth bearing in mind this is just the first of three stages in the Alps. As a former world mountain-bike champion, you would have to give Evans a very good shot to hold his own over the course of all three - Stage 16, Cuneo to Jausiers, is 157km but has not one but two HCs in the 2351m Col de la Lombarde and the 2802m Cime de la Bonette-Restefond, while Stage 17 is the big one, the Alpe d'Huez, 210.5km from Embrun with no less than three (count them out, three) HCs.

So often armchair fans of this great race are told the Tour de France is won or lost in the mountains so the next four days are absolutely crucial for Evans. If he can come through Stage 17 with the yellow jersey still on his back, and Frank Schleck still riding his slipstream, nothing short of a zombie attack will stop Silence-Lotto from pulling out the specially made canary-coloured bike they had made for Evans for his triumphal march into Paris.