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Home » Top Stories » Road » Armstrong Comeback

Evans not worried about Armstrong

By VeloNews.com
Published: Nov. 8, 2008
Evans says Armstrong's presence at the Tour won't make much of a difference to him.
Evans says Armstrong's presence at the Tour won't make much of a difference to him.
Photo: Graham Watson

Two-time Tour de France runner-up Cadel Evans isn’t losing any sleep over the prospect of Lance Armstrong’s return to racing.

Back in his native Australia for a visit, Evans told the media outlet ABC that Armstrong would need to be at his best if the Texan hopes to win an eighth Tour crown.

“Let’s see how he goes,” Evans told ABC. “At first he said he going to come back and he was going to win the Tour, now a few months on, he’s saying, ‘well, maybe I’ll start the Tour.’ So there’s been a bit of a change of tact and a change of enthusiasm there. Whether Lance is in the Tour or not, unless he returns to the level that he used to ride at, it won’t make much difference to me.”

Armstrong, 37, remains uncommitted on whether or not he’ll start the Tour as part of his comeback campaign. So far he’s confirmed he’ll kick start his comeback at the Tour Down Under in January before racing the Tour of California and a string of spring classics ahead of the Giro d’Italia.

Evans, who turns 32 in February, said all the attention Armstrong’s return is bringing to the sport is a good thing. The hard part will be racing against him.

“Just having his presence back, for me personally, he’s good for the sport that I love, and what’s good for the sport, I’m always happy about,” Evans continued. “As a competitor, he’s a pleasure to race against and he’s very strong. His tactics are clear and he’s actually easy to read, so he’s good to race against. The problem is you have to be incredibly good to beat him.”

Evans admitted that Armstrong’s Astana team would be hard to overcome, especially since the team was forced to skip this year’s Tour and will be gunning for revenge if the team is allowed back at the French race this summer as expected.

“Mainly the challenge that I see in the 2009 Tour for me is in the tactics that I need to use to win the race,” he surmised. “You need a really, really, really strong team, which Astana have, and that’s my biggest hurdle to overcome at this point.”

Speaking of his own team, Silence-Lotto, Evans said it was “disappointing” that new recruit Bernhard Kohl admitted to doping after testing positive for CERA during this year’s Tour.

“Maybe in this case it was too good to be true. We built our team around having him on the team, but in my mind personally, it’s better that we catch the cheats,” he said. “You build a team around these people and having someone who has the ability to get on the podium at the Tour, who wants to come and ride for you to help you win the Tour, it’s obviously tactically a perfect position.”

Evans said he is still recovering from a knee injury he suffered while celebrating last year’s Tour at a post-race party when he slipped and twisted his knee.

While Armstrong is set to race the Tour Down Under, Evans said his season debut might not come until as late as Paris-Nice in early March.

“It’s a little bit sore, but I’ve been working pretty much flat out on that since Beijing,” he said. “I continued to race to finish off the season, but focusing on getting my knee rehabilitated and safe to be 100 percent for next year has been my main focus.”