Australian shares World Tour lead with Paris-Nice winner Martin
Cadel Evan’s excellent early season form has earned him another reward, with the BMC Racing Team rider moving into joint first place in the UCI WorldTour rankings. The Australian is level on points with the HTC Highroad rider Tony Martin, who won Paris-Nice. Each has 108 to his credit.
Evans has only competed twice before this season, riding the Giro del Friuli and Montespaschi Strade Bianche races in early March. His strong performance in Tirreno-Adriatico was therefore a little unexpected, both to him and to the fans and media.
Because of that, he’s a little surprised to be at the top of the world rankings. “With the low key start to my season, I would not have predicted this, but I might have hoped for it,” he stated. “It’s still early, though. Let’s have a look at the rankings again in August or September.”
Evans’ big goal is the Tour de France, and everything done before then will be with that target in mind. He deliberately choose to compete less in the early part of this season, and will have a light programme in the run-up to the French event.
He has twice finished second in the race and after disappointment there in the past two seasons, is determined to push hard to finally top the podium this time round.
The BMC Racing Team will take a lot of satisfaction from how things went in Italy. Strong team-work by George Hincapie and Alessandro Ballan helped set Evans up for his stage win in Macerata, with the Australian finishing things off there to win while wearing the race leader’s jersey.
He finished things off well with a strong ride in the final time trial.
Team general manager Jim Ochowicz said that the riders would draw motivation from how things panned out there. “To be victorious this week gives us a chance to concentrate on the next phase of the calendar, which is the Classics, and continue to stay on track with our objectives and strategy to get there.”