Evans Wins Critérium du Dauphiné Stage One

BMC’s Cadel Evans and two other riders attacked five kilometers from the finish of the first road stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné cycling race and managed to stay away to the finish line. Evans won the sprint and the stage, just four seconds ahead of the pursuing peloton.

The stage win elevated Evans to second in the General Classification behind Sky’s Bradley Wiggins, the defending champion.

The Daupnié is a climber’s race; the 187 km stage from Seyssins to Saint-Vallier contained six categorized climbs, a Cat 2 followed by a mix of threes and fours, with the final cat 3 just nine km from the finish line. The closest thing to a sprint stage in this year’s parcours, this was a severe challenge for the sprinters, despite the final five km being downhill.

“It was a technical descent, quite narrow as well,” Evans told Velonation.com. “I saw an opportunity there to go clear of the peloton. You have to try something when you’re in that situation.

“Normally, it was favorable for the peloton to catch us but they didn’t,” he continued. “I’m a racer, I like to compete and do such moves. Things have to go your way if you try but you have to try something somewhere…

“This shows that the work I’ve done at training has been good but there’s still a lot of work to be done until the Tour de France,” he concluded.

A group of six attacked in the first five kilometers: Giovanni Bernaudeau (Europcar,) Markel Irizar (RadioShack-Nissan,) Nicolas Edet (Cofidis,) Sep Vanmarcke (Garmin-Barracuda,) Maarten Tjallingii (Rabobank,) and Yukihiro Doi (Argos-Shimano.)

This group cooperated until the final climb, when Irizar jumped off the front. The plucky Spaniard was ridden down with five kilometers to go, when Saur Sojasun’s Jérôme Coppel led Evans and Astana’s Andrey Kashechkin on a charge for the line.

This attack fractured the peloton, which had been under the control of Omega Pharma-Quickstep. As organization faded, so did the chances of the three leaders increase. The peloton finally realized it had to get serious, but not quite in time: the leading trio crossed the line four seconds ahead.

Sky’s Luke Durbridge, winner of the Prologue, passed the yellow jersey to his teammate Bradley Wiggins who leads Evans by a single second.