Cycling News

By Simon Gerrans

You watch a stage of the Tour de France, see the break escape and then the peloton fail to chase as the gap of the leaders widen beyond 20 minutes. You think it is just a transition stage, there is nothing on the line for the overall contenders, and that it is a rare opportunity for those who go on attack. What you may not realise though is how wrong you can be. Take stage 11 as an example. There is another world to the Tour de France that people may not see or hear about, where tactics can take some surprising turns - such as Cadel Evans' willingness to give up his yellow jersey to us at Credit Agricole. The reason? To ease the pressure on his team before the Tour hits the Alps on Sunday. This it how it unfolded on the 167.5km stage frm Lannemezan to Foix.We had a couple of guys in the early breakaway, Alexandre Botcharov and Dmitriy Fofonov. Botcharov was best placed overall, but thought too far off to be a threat. After they went up the road we were riding along easily. I went up to Cadel to congratulate him on his jersey because I hadn't seen him for a while.
He said: ``I want to have a talk to you for a few minutes.'' I said: 'ok.' I dropped back for a little bit. Then 10 minutes later when we were at about 70km, he came up to me and says:''Listen, we are going to let you guys take the lead. We want to let Botchaov take the jersey.'' He said: ``Obviously we can't control what the other teams do, but we are happy for you guys to take the lead to take the pressure off us. Whatever you do, don't say anything on your radio, drop back and let your sports director know.'' Silence-Lotto believe all the radios are tapped and everyone is listening to everyone else. Sure enough, I went back to the director and let him know and it was all okay for a little while. We didn't tell Botcharov about it to start with, because we wanted him to concentrate on the stage win. Obviously it was out of his control what was going to happen behind him. But things were said to him to motivate him a bit, things like: ''c'mon you can take the yellow jersey'' every now and then. He didn't say anything straight away.Then Oscar Perreiro (Caisse d'Epargne) went up the road on the climb and obviously CSC reacted to that and put the tempo on to bring Perreiro back. That stuffed it up because that brought the breakaway back to us. If they had not happened they would have won by a margin 20 something minutes.They were willing to let the jersey go away with that and place the pressure of it onto Botcharov's shoulders. Okay ... Botcharov, who lives in nearby Pau, did not get the win on a stage where he knew the roads back to front. But he so very nearly could have. Such is the magic of Australia and the Tour if it shines on you.