Thursday, March 17, 2011

Spyns Tour de France Tours: On top of world, Evans is back into gear


www.tdf-tours.com
www.spyns.com


With only 4 months to go, Spyns Tour de France clients excitedly prepare for thier trip to France with Spyns Tour de France Tours, Cadel Evans, seems to have takes a lighter approach to this years tour, in terms of racing anyway.

He looks to be in form but is he a real contender for this years Tour de France?  We will have to wait until July to see if he can better his two second places at the Tour de France.

Fresh from winning the Tirreno-Adriatico classic yesterday, Cadel Evans has proven he is back among the contenders for this year's Tour de France.

After being among the favourites for last year's Tour, Evans faded badly to finish 26th on general classification; the window of opportunity fast closing for the 34-year-old.

However, yesterday's imposing win over 2010 Tour de France runner-up Andy Schleck proves he is not finished yet.

Evans faces his next big test when he comes up against controversial three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador in Spain next week.

Evans rocketed to equal-first on the world rankings yesterday when he held off his rivals in the closing 9.3km time trial to win the seven-day coast-to-coast race in northern Italy by 11 seconds.

The Australian had only raced for two days before tackling Tirreno-Adriatico, but had solid support from BMC teammates Alessandro Ballan and George Hincapie.

The two-time Tour de France runner-up and 2009 world road champion will next test his legs in the seven-day Tour of Catalonia, starting on Monday, where he will race Contador, Carlos Sastre, Denis Menchov, Ivan Basso, Levi Leipheimer, Christian Van de Velde, Vincenzo Nibali and Michele Scarponi.

Only brothers Frank and Andy Schleck are missing from the field with the older brother troubled by a nagging back complaint, while Andy is also struggling with early season form.

He finished a disappointing 41st behind Evans, at 14min 34 sec. Swiss Fabian Cancellara won the final stage of Tirreno-Adriatico.

With a question mark hanging over Contador's racing future as the UCI weighs up grounds for an appeal against the Spanish federation's decision to allow him to resume racing after having tested positive to a banned substance at last year's Tour, bookmakers have yet to frame an early market for the July tour. Evans' win ended a three-year drought in winning a stage race, since the 2008 edition of the Settimana Coppie Bartali.

He heads to Spain leading the world road rankings on a countback from German Tony Martin (HTC-Highroad), who won the Paris-Nice race last Sunday.

"It will be a different style of race (in Spain) with long climbs against a field of climbers," Evans said. "We'll see how I go. My form is not quite there yet, but I won't be too bad in big climbs through Andorra."

Of his rise to the top of the rankings, Evans said: "With the low-key start to my own season, I would not have predicted this, but I might have hoped for it.

"The season has just started, let's have a look at the rankings again in August or September."

Spyns Tours and TDF Tours specialize in Tour de France packages for both riders, non-riders, and mixed tours. Spyns is an active travel company based in Whister, BC (Canada) and Beaujolais France. Spyns offers active holidays to Europe including trips to the 2011 Tour de France. For more information about Spyns 2011 Tour de France tours, please visit http://www.tdf-tours.com/ http://www.spyns.com/ or call 1.888.825.4720.

No comments:

Post a Comment