Tour Team News: Another Second for Evans

Cadel Evans of BMC sprinted to his second consecutive runner-up finish Sunday at the Tour de France to hold onto his second place overall as Thibaut Pinot (FDJ-Bigmat) soloed to a 26-second victory.

Evans was part of a select group that included race leader Bradley Wiggins (Sky) that launched a furious chase of Pinot over the top of the final climb, 16 kilometers from the finish of the 157.5 km race. The result caused a few more pre-race favorites to lose time. Evans said the past two stages have followed a different pattern than years past.

“People are isolated and a lot of the leaders are isolated, especially guys like Jurgen Van Den Broeck (Lotto-Belisol Team) and Alejandro Valverde (Movistar Team), who have already lost time and don’t have anything to lose and so are willing to put it out there.” Evans remains 10 seconds behind Wiggins heading into Monday’s 41.5 km individual time trial in France from Arc-et-Senans to Besancon.

Evans who added he has to grab every opportunity by the next went on to say “It could be turned upside down tomorrow (in the time trial), we’ll see.”

BMC Racing Team Directeur Sportif John Lelangue said a reconnaissance session after the Tour de Romandie in early May revealed the technical nature of the descent to the finish. “We knew from the reco every second would count,” he said. “It was a good place at the end, we were in the fight and we even put one guy in the breakaway with Amaël Moinard, which put a little bit of pressure on Sky.”

Lelangue said not having the race lead has been advantageous to this point. “It’s perfect for us that we don’t have the yellow jersey so we don’t have to control too much. It’s also been perfect for us that there are some guys who are close (to the lead) and want to make the race a little harder and some guys who have lost two or three minutes and want to make up time.”

Cadel on the BMC timemachine TM01