Post by wheelspinner on Jul 25, 2011 3:46:34 GMT -5
They're saying today that this is the biggest sporting achievement ever by an Australian. It's hard to disagree; the Tour is the biggest annual sporting event in the world and Evans is the first Australian to win it. He is only the third non-European to win, after Americans Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond. And, at 34, he's the oldest winner in the post-war era. All up, it's a massive achievement.
Of course the Tour is always a team event, and Evans had massive help from his American team, and from stalwarts such as the American George Hincapie, who was racing in a record-equalling 16th Tour. The Brits also did well, with HTC's Manxian rider Mark Cavendish taking the sprinters' crown (ably led out by Australian Mark Renshaw, may I add). HTC are also an American team, so we can all share the glory.
My fond hope is that Evans's win will inspire Australian drivers to be a little bit less homicidal towards cyclists in future, but I'm not holding my breath.
A self-confessed loner, with a nation riding beside him — Australia celebrates a new sporting legend
Greg Baum July 25, 2011
WHEN no-one was left to ride with Cadel Evans — not his team, which could not stay with him; not other leading riders, who refused makeshift alliances; not the European fans, who were predominantly with Andy Schleck — a nation got up to ride with him.
SBS's coverage, so panoramic and yet so intimate, made this sense more acute: we were with Cadel — the only name necessary — every gruelling pedal stroke of the way, three weeks' and 3400 kilometres' worth, until the Tour de France at last was his.
As when Sachin Tendulkar bats for India, we could see him, but he could only sense us. For a self-confessed loner, in an essentially lonely sport, it must have been an odd sensation. Out there, he would not have thought about it, because he has trained himself to close his mind — no matter how weary and besieged — to everything except the road ahead.
But at the finish line, as messages twittered in from everyone from his wife, Chiara Passerini, to tennis star Kim Clijsters, to cycling compatriot Richie Porte — who is on Alberto Contador's team but now rejoiced for Cadel — he must have known that his life would never again be the same.
In the breathless moment when he grasped the sleeves on the famous yellow jersey that he would now wear in the cavalcade to the finish line on the Champs Elysees and prepared to pull it over his head, he seemed also to understand this.
Sport is very much about the moment. In the immediacy of this one, Evans's victory — the first by an Australian in le Tour's 108-year history — felt like the greatest achievement by an Australian sportsman.
Necessarily, it is visceral judgment. The scale against which this must be measured slides in all directions. Trying to fix the improbability of any one triumph against the size of the sport, its dearness to our hearts, the demands it makes, the difference between team and individual pursuits, and the role technology plays — to name but some considerations — is next to impossible.
In 1983, when John Bertrand relieved the US of the America's Cup for the first time in its 132-year history, London's Daily Mail declared it, on its front page, the greatest sporting feat of the century, and then prime minister Bob Hawke slurrily decreed: "Any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum." Bertrand is revered to this day. But it was doubtful that Prime Minister Julia Gillard would unilaterally declare a public holiday for Cadel (and yesterday she ruled it out); apart from anything else, Tony Abbott would oppose it.
History eventually cut Australia II's victory down to size a little. The frontman, Alan Bond, turned out to be dodgier than anyone would have preferred. The Cup, for ocean going-sized yachts, remember, eventually found its way to landlocked Switzerland, suggesting that what really mattered was money and connections. Yachting was and remains the sport of the elite. The America's Cup is barely mentioned now.
Cycling, like yachting, is as much recreation as sport here. But it has always had a place in popular culture, and a rich history at the Olympic Games; its muscularity suits the way the country imagines itself to be. In Mulga Bill's Bicycle — written seven years before the inaugural Tour de France — Banjo Paterson affectionately mocked "the cycling craze"; another was upon us even before Cadel began to scale France's alpine heights.
Meantime, le Tour grew and grew, and now styles itself as the greatest single annual international sports event, and to see the crush lining the roadsides these past three weeks is to believe it. It is more than a bike race; in its setting, traditions, colours and nomenclature, it has a Euro chic that captivates the world and is replicated everywhere, including here. Cadel's way of victory, coolly, at the 11th hour, is the way Italy might win a big soccer championship. The legendary winners' names — Armstrong, Hinault, Indurain, Merckx, LeMond — resonate even among the barely dimly aware. The spectacular coverage, interweaving gallants of sport and history, tends to whet even non-sporting appetites.
But le Tour is at heart a sporting challenge. Surely no event asks more of its competitors. It is long, hazardous, exposing, physically and mentally draining, replete with skulduggery, breaking men and making them, building chapter by chapter into each year's new epic. Temperamentally, it suits Cadel. He is a singular combination of diesel engine and violin, able to chug away at metronomic rpms for hours at a time, but also delicately strung, obsessive about health, hygiene and appearance, a reclusive, sensitive soul who is married to an Italian pianist and cares about his little dog and Tibet, but on the road is steely and indestructible.
Previously, he had finished eighth, fifth, second and second in le Tour, a record that is his validation as a cyclist, but also full of wretched happenstance might have been his ruin, breaking even his massive heart; many thought so. But he did it, and alone, too; without his team, once it left the flat lands, without public favour, in Europe or here, without (conveniently marginalised in discussions today) drugs; this we have to believe now, though it puts us all at one with World Anti-Drug Agency chief John Fahey, who once said of Cadel that he believed he was drug-free because he was Australian, and because he wanted to believe it. Seemingly, when testing blood, true blue is a pass.
Possibly, the only tarnish on Cadel's triumph was a little all-too-predictable Australian exceptionalism, manifesting in cyber-taunting of runner-up Andy Schleck, fortunately off-set by Australian veteran Robbie McEwen's vote of sympathy, and by Schleck's own graciousness to declare Cadel a worthy winner. It had taken both of them to tango so epically.
Which leaves only to declare that if Cadel Evans's victory in the 2011 Tour de France is not the single most heroic Australian sporting accomplishment of all, it is at least the equal of any preceding it.
m.theage.com.au/sport/cycling/a-selfconfessed-loner-with-a-nation-riding-beside-him-x2014-australia-celebrates-a-new-sporting-legend-20110724-1hvdq.html
Of course the Tour is always a team event, and Evans had massive help from his American team, and from stalwarts such as the American George Hincapie, who was racing in a record-equalling 16th Tour. The Brits also did well, with HTC's Manxian rider Mark Cavendish taking the sprinters' crown (ably led out by Australian Mark Renshaw, may I add). HTC are also an American team, so we can all share the glory.
My fond hope is that Evans's win will inspire Australian drivers to be a little bit less homicidal towards cyclists in future, but I'm not holding my breath.
A self-confessed loner, with a nation riding beside him — Australia celebrates a new sporting legend
Greg Baum July 25, 2011
WHEN no-one was left to ride with Cadel Evans — not his team, which could not stay with him; not other leading riders, who refused makeshift alliances; not the European fans, who were predominantly with Andy Schleck — a nation got up to ride with him.
SBS's coverage, so panoramic and yet so intimate, made this sense more acute: we were with Cadel — the only name necessary — every gruelling pedal stroke of the way, three weeks' and 3400 kilometres' worth, until the Tour de France at last was his.
As when Sachin Tendulkar bats for India, we could see him, but he could only sense us. For a self-confessed loner, in an essentially lonely sport, it must have been an odd sensation. Out there, he would not have thought about it, because he has trained himself to close his mind — no matter how weary and besieged — to everything except the road ahead.
But at the finish line, as messages twittered in from everyone from his wife, Chiara Passerini, to tennis star Kim Clijsters, to cycling compatriot Richie Porte — who is on Alberto Contador's team but now rejoiced for Cadel — he must have known that his life would never again be the same.
In the breathless moment when he grasped the sleeves on the famous yellow jersey that he would now wear in the cavalcade to the finish line on the Champs Elysees and prepared to pull it over his head, he seemed also to understand this.
Sport is very much about the moment. In the immediacy of this one, Evans's victory — the first by an Australian in le Tour's 108-year history — felt like the greatest achievement by an Australian sportsman.
Necessarily, it is visceral judgment. The scale against which this must be measured slides in all directions. Trying to fix the improbability of any one triumph against the size of the sport, its dearness to our hearts, the demands it makes, the difference between team and individual pursuits, and the role technology plays — to name but some considerations — is next to impossible.
In 1983, when John Bertrand relieved the US of the America's Cup for the first time in its 132-year history, London's Daily Mail declared it, on its front page, the greatest sporting feat of the century, and then prime minister Bob Hawke slurrily decreed: "Any boss who sacks a worker for not turning up today is a bum." Bertrand is revered to this day. But it was doubtful that Prime Minister Julia Gillard would unilaterally declare a public holiday for Cadel (and yesterday she ruled it out); apart from anything else, Tony Abbott would oppose it.
History eventually cut Australia II's victory down to size a little. The frontman, Alan Bond, turned out to be dodgier than anyone would have preferred. The Cup, for ocean going-sized yachts, remember, eventually found its way to landlocked Switzerland, suggesting that what really mattered was money and connections. Yachting was and remains the sport of the elite. The America's Cup is barely mentioned now.
Cycling, like yachting, is as much recreation as sport here. But it has always had a place in popular culture, and a rich history at the Olympic Games; its muscularity suits the way the country imagines itself to be. In Mulga Bill's Bicycle — written seven years before the inaugural Tour de France — Banjo Paterson affectionately mocked "the cycling craze"; another was upon us even before Cadel began to scale France's alpine heights.
Meantime, le Tour grew and grew, and now styles itself as the greatest single annual international sports event, and to see the crush lining the roadsides these past three weeks is to believe it. It is more than a bike race; in its setting, traditions, colours and nomenclature, it has a Euro chic that captivates the world and is replicated everywhere, including here. Cadel's way of victory, coolly, at the 11th hour, is the way Italy might win a big soccer championship. The legendary winners' names — Armstrong, Hinault, Indurain, Merckx, LeMond — resonate even among the barely dimly aware. The spectacular coverage, interweaving gallants of sport and history, tends to whet even non-sporting appetites.
But le Tour is at heart a sporting challenge. Surely no event asks more of its competitors. It is long, hazardous, exposing, physically and mentally draining, replete with skulduggery, breaking men and making them, building chapter by chapter into each year's new epic. Temperamentally, it suits Cadel. He is a singular combination of diesel engine and violin, able to chug away at metronomic rpms for hours at a time, but also delicately strung, obsessive about health, hygiene and appearance, a reclusive, sensitive soul who is married to an Italian pianist and cares about his little dog and Tibet, but on the road is steely and indestructible.
Previously, he had finished eighth, fifth, second and second in le Tour, a record that is his validation as a cyclist, but also full of wretched happenstance might have been his ruin, breaking even his massive heart; many thought so. But he did it, and alone, too; without his team, once it left the flat lands, without public favour, in Europe or here, without (conveniently marginalised in discussions today) drugs; this we have to believe now, though it puts us all at one with World Anti-Drug Agency chief John Fahey, who once said of Cadel that he believed he was drug-free because he was Australian, and because he wanted to believe it. Seemingly, when testing blood, true blue is a pass.
Possibly, the only tarnish on Cadel's triumph was a little all-too-predictable Australian exceptionalism, manifesting in cyber-taunting of runner-up Andy Schleck, fortunately off-set by Australian veteran Robbie McEwen's vote of sympathy, and by Schleck's own graciousness to declare Cadel a worthy winner. It had taken both of them to tango so epically.
Which leaves only to declare that if Cadel Evans's victory in the 2011 Tour de France is not the single most heroic Australian sporting accomplishment of all, it is at least the equal of any preceding it.
m.theage.com.au/sport/cycling/a-selfconfessed-loner-with-a-nation-riding-beside-him-x2014-australia-celebrates-a-new-sporting-legend-20110724-1hvdq.html
