Cadel Evans – “It's a long way from being over...”

“I’m only in the lead by a very small margin but, tactically every second counts. It’s a long way to the finish and our goal has always been to have the yellow jersey in Paris but as we saw yesterday, anything can happen in this race. One day ago I was counting every pedal stroke to the finish and today I was counting the seconds to try and calculate if I’d take the lead or not. That’s cycling; it can be cruel but sometimes it can be fair. _ “I nearly got dropped on the first category-three climb today and then I just said to my team-mate, ‘Guys, stay calm, be cool and hopefully I’ll get better.’ Thankfully it all came together at the end. The main difficulty was accounting for the numbers that CSC and Saunier Duval had. In that situation I have to watch three guys and they all know that; so it’s very hard to control. _ “I opted to keep an eye on Menchov, Sastre and Frank Schleck. I had to chose my guys and play my cards right. Finally Menchov saw the light and we worked together. That’s going to work to his advantage later on. _ “I think they might have figured out that I was suffering after the crash in stage nine. From the amount of blood that they would have seen yesterday, they’d be stupid if they didn’t know I was in a little bit of pain. _ “We may not be the strongest team but we’re trying to be the smartest team. We’re using our strengths as intelligently as possible and CSC still has a lot to gain. They’re only just out of the lead by one second and they’ve got the weight of numbers. _ “Yesterday I was on the road honestly thinking that my Tour was over. I was scared to get up and move because I thought I’d broken a bone and to find myself in yellow now is just great. I don’t quite believe that I’ve got the yellow jersey yet. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow and realize what I’ve done. It’s a long way from being over but it’s a step towards where we want to be.”