The new champion of the Tour de France will be Australian Cadel Evans.
July 23, 2011- The Tour de France, the world’s most prestigious cycling race will end on Sunday, but the race winner was decided today after the individual time trial. Australian Cadel Evans entered the time trial 57 seconds behind leader Andy Schleck of Luxembourg. It was quite a large amount of time to make up in a time trial that was only 26 miles long.
When the time trial had ended Cadel Evans was the overall leader and Andy Schleck was second. Schleck was leading going into the trial and was last to leave wearing the yellow jersey signifying the race leader. He had worked hard for close to three weeks of the race to get the yellow jersey on Friday but could only hold it for less than 24 hours.
Shortly into the time trial it became evident that Evans was cutting big chunks out of Schleck’s lead and it would only be a matter of when, not if, he would take the overall lead. By the end of the time trial Evans had taken back the yellow jersey and all but assured himself of being the race’s winner tomorrow as all that remains is a ceremonial ride into Paris.
This marks Schleck’s third consecutive year of finishing runner up and once again summed up the type of elite cyclist he is – great in the mountains but struggles elsewhere. The standings with one stage to go are Cadel Evans in first, Andy Schleck 1:34 behind in second and his brother Frank Schleck 2:30 behind in third.
