Cadel Evans – “20 years of work has been put into this performance...”

“Aldo Sassi said to me last year, ‘Now you’ve won the world championship, you’ve made yourself a complete rider but you can win a Grand Tour and I hope for you it’s the Tour de France.’ It was he who believed in me from 2001 and he never doubted my abilities he never gave up with me and he worked through good and bad.
“I’ve had some bad moments in the last 10 years but that just makes the good moments even better.
“In [the final time trial of] past years... in 2007, Contador had a particularly good day that day. I had an average day. I think I was seventh or eighth... I didn’t have a bad day. In 2008 I was injured, I was exhausted I was on my limit absolutely every day. Just getting in to bed or having a shower was so fatiguing and stressful. Physically and emotionally it was just so difficult but then you’ve got to go to a time trial and any weakness you have really shows up. That’s when everyone was saying, ‘For sure, you’re going to win...’ but I pulled up short. That was still the hardest Tour I ever rode in my life.
“Today I just went through the processes like we do every day. We have a plan and today it was ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ and we followed the plan, did the best we could and we came up a few seconds short for the stage [win] but I’ll look back at it in time and, when I’ve got time to reflect on it, I’ll enjoy it I’m sure.
“It’s been a bit of a strange race. In the mountains there wasn’t a definitive strong team... but we did everything right each step of the way. Everyone in my team, every step of the way, we did everything we could to put me in the right position today.
“I can’t quite believe it all quite now. My thanks go to everyone who played a part in today – we’re talking 20 years of work has been put into this performance.
“There has been a lot of great work put in by people behind me – some are still with us and some are not any more – but I hope the sun is shining tomorrow on the Champs-Elysées and we to the finish without any problems.
“A lot of people like to criticize but they should try and do it.”