Cadel Evans (BMC Racing) will find himself on the back foot when the Tour de France gets underway again after Tuesday’s rest day, after losing a significant chunk of time to primary rival Bradley Wiggins (Sky Procycling) in Monday’s time trial.
Evans surrendered 1’43” to the British rider on stage nine, a 41.5km test from Arc-et-Senans to Besançon. The Aussie’s time was good for sixth place, an indication of just how well Wiggins is riding at the moment, though Evans was just able to hold on to his second place overall. Sky Procycling went 1-2 with Chris Froome, whose second place finish in the time trial allowed him to jump from sixth to third overall, while cutting 1’07” off Evans’ lead over him.
Evans is now a minute and 53 seconds in arrears of Wiggins, with Froome at 2’07”.
In spite of allowing Wiggins to climb into the driver’s seat of the Tour with less than two weeks left, Evans was not despondent. The defending champion took some solace in his sixth place finish, keeping him within striking distance, with several strikes liable to occur in the mountains to come.
“I rode not my best time trial but certainly not a bad one,” Evans admitted. “In comparison to the other time trialists like Fabian Cancellara and Tony Martin and so on, it seems as though I wasn't so far off the mark. But Sky had two very, very strong riders today.
“We'll re-assess the situation day-by-day and of course we don't give up, that's for sure. There's still a lot more racing to go before Paris.”
After a day of rest and recovery, Evans will try to put Wiggins and Team Sky under pressure in the mountains. Wednesday’s stage provides 194km and three categorized climbs, including the hors catégorie Col du Grand Colombier, which crests 43km from the finish. Riders will go over the category-three Col de Richemond with 20 kilometres to race, before a descent into the finish in Bellegarde-sur-Valserine.
Along with Evans’ pursuit of Wiggins, BMC Racing may have picked up another target, as Tejay Van Garderen used an outstanding time trial to get back into the thick of the white jersey race. The competition for the young rider’s jersey has heated up over the past three stages. Rein Taaramäe (Cofidis) took the lead on Saturday with a classy ride to the Tour’s first summit finish. The following day, Thibaut Pinot (FDJ-BigMat) closed the gap with his stage eight win. And Van Garderen took the white jersey back from Taarmäe on stage nine, with a fourth place finish in Besançon.
The finish, behind just Wiggins, Froome, and Fabian Cancellara (Radioshack-Nissan), also puts the American back into the top ten overall, slotting him into eighth.
Amazingly, Van Garderen was able to get the best of Cancellara at both intermediate time checks, setting the new best time at each, even though he was initially picking his way carefully through the technical course.
“We mainly talked about not taking risks,” Van Garderen said of the reconnaissance mission he took with Evans before they hit the course for real. “I told him I'd go hard, but try to keep it a regular tempo to not go too over the edge. I had to promise Cadel I wouldn't crash. It wasn't until the second half that I really started to ramp it up.”
While Team Sky have the positions of both Wiggins and Froome to think about, time will tell how BMC choose to utilize Van Garderen, whose team-mate Evans has much work to do with the mountains looming.