2011 Tour De France Results: Cadel Evans Secures Yellow, Cavendish Claims Green
As the curtain comes down on a remarkable 2011 Tour de France, Stage 21 proved to be the same bi-polar experience that we have seen for the last 20 years.
It started with the unveiling of a memorial to the great, two-time winner of the Tour, Laurent Fignon, who died last year after a battle with cancer.
It then went into the ceremonial neutral phase prior to the official start of the stage.
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This is traditionally a photo opportunity which brought together the jersey holders from each of the classifications, Cadel Evans (GC), Mark Cavendish (points), Sammy Sanchez (KoM) and Pierre Rolland (young rider).
It also brought together Evans with the Schleck brothers, who occupy the other two steps on the podium, and it was nice to see that they were able to share a joke after almost coming to blows two days ago and battling it out for the Tour win yesterday.
It’s this sportsmanship that endears cycling to its fans and the unofficially neutralized final stage gives a rare opportunity for the riders to acknowledge the fans who have followed the race around France for the past three weeks.
It has been a memorable Tour.
From the first week which saw so many contenders fall victim to crashes, including the horror accident which saw—amongst many other things—Alexander Vinokourov disappear into the trees and fracture his femur and the ridiculous spectacle of Nicki Sorensen’s bike getting hooked up in a media motorcycle.
And who will ever forget the terrible vision of Juan Antonio Flecha being hit by a media car and Johnny Hoogerland being catapulted through a barbed wire fence.
It’s a testament to the courage of both riders that they both continued and made it all the way to Paris and more so that Hoogerland continued to be involved in breakaways in keeping with the pattern that he established in the first week.
Andy Schleck delivered two incredible solo charges in the Alps that almost established a Tour winning lead.
We saw the emergence of Pierre Rolland who became only the second Frenchman to win the a stage ending on the Alpe-d’Huez and claimed the only stage win for France in this year’s Tour.
Rolland rode with teammate Thomas Voeckler through every stage and guided him through the mountain stages until Voeckler released him to take his stage win.
Voeckler himself proved to be the unlikely superstar of the Tour, holding the yellow jersey through nine stages including in the Pyrenees and up until the final stage in the Alps when he finally relinquished it to Andy Schleck.
Alberto Contador had a couple of falls in the early stages, effectively destroying his chances of a fourth win, but he returned in the final week to spice up some of the final stages.
And then we saw the electrifying time-trial in the penultimate stage which saw Evans destroy the brothers Schleck to claim the yellow jersey and take his place amongst the list of winners of the Tour de France.
The final stage, however, is all about the sprinters and after Team BMC had been given the honour of leading the peloton onto the bone-rattling cobblestones of the Champs Elysees, the race for the points began in earnest.
It’s hard to think of a more impressive venue for the culmination of a sporting event than the Champs Elysees. Not only is it a beautiful avenue—the French claim it as the most beautiful in the world, La plus belle avenue du monde—it a stretch of road that is steeped in history.
We were treated to a breakaway of riders who were non-threatening to the leaders of any of the classification, leaving green jersey holder Cavendish to simply mark his closest competitor for the points title, Jose Joaquin Rojas.
Cavendish beat Rojas to the remaining points on the interim sprint and was left with the difficult decision as to whether to have his team try to chase down the breakaway to give him a chance of taking the prestigious stage win or continue to secure his points victory by shadowing Rojas.
Inevitably, the breakaway was caught, and we were treated to the stunning spectacle of a bunch sprint to finish the Tour.
Predictably, HTC-Highroad took their place at the head of the peloton and delivered Cavendish in the perfect position to claim the stage and secure his green jersey and finally fulfilled his destiny to become the points winner of the Tour de France and underline his status as the world’s fastest sprinter.
And so, with the Tour over we have our first Australian champion of the Tour in Cadel Evans who has now joined the ranks of Aussie sporting heroes and finally erases the pain and disappointment of the previous four Tours.
The BMC team stopped as a unit as soon as they had crossed the line and embraced not only Evans, but each other after riding an almost perfect Tour.
The win vindicates Evans’ decision to buy his way out of his Omega Pharma-Lotto contract and join the small and unheralded team BMC, a team that wasn’t even guaranteed a start in the Tour de france and in two years has developed from obscurity to being the team of the Tour de France winner.
What a great race, I can’t wait for next year.
Jersey holders for the 2011 Tour de France (from www.letour.fr)
Final General Classification Standings (from www.letour.fr)
| 1. |  EVANS Cadel | BMC RACING TEAM | 86h 12' 22" |
| 2. |  SCHLECK Andy | TEAM LEOPARD-TREK | + 01' 34" |
| 3. | SCHLECK Frank | TEAM LEOPARD-TREK | + 02' 30" |
| 4. |  VOECKLER Thomas | TEAM EUROPCAR | + 03' 20" |
| 5. |  CONTADOR Alberto | SAXO BANK SUNGARD | + 03' 57" |
| 6. | SANCHEZ Samuel | EUSKALTEL - EUSKADI | + 04' 55" |
| 7. |  CUNEGO Damiano | LAMPRE - ISD | + 06' 05" |
| 8. | BASSO Ivan | LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE | + 07' 23" |
| 9. |  DANIELSON Tom | TEAM GARMIN - CERVELO | + 08' 15" |
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