Velo Files: Should Cadel Stop?

It's a question being bandied around a lot of late, and in Australia at least, speculation is reaching fever pitch. For Anthony Tan, the answer is simple.

Realistically, how many more chances do you think you have left to win the Tour de France?

'Two, maybe three...'

A little over four years ago, on July 20, I asked Cadel Evans 'the question' in the Pyrenean town of Pau, the night before the second rest day of the 2010 Tour.

By his own admission, then, he should have stopped in 2012; certainly after 2013.

Not stopped racing altogether - no, he still had the drive, and ability doth not vanish overnight - but stopped trying to win the Tour de France, or any another Grand Tour, for that matter.

Instead, it took a conversation with sporting manager Allan Peiper around this time last year, where the former told it to him straight: you will no longer be riding the Tour - Tejay is our leader, our future, at BMC.

It was a shock to the system but a shock he needed to have.

When you've won the worlds biggest and toughest bike race it's a bitter pill to swallow. Tour de France. Over. The reality, however, is that a team can only support a leader for so long... Particularly one that, despite winning the race just two years prior at that point, he, for a number of reasons, under-performed in.

The consolation prize was to lead the team at the 2014 Giro but as always happens in Grand Tour racing the third week revealed all.

He was done. Time to change tack.

For me the last two Tours and Giri d'Italia he rode told him what he needed to do: forget about riding GC as far as Grand Tours go, and concentrate on week-long races and one-day Claasics.

There would have been no shame in that. Far less than bashing your head against a brick wall, in a vain effort to eek something out of your system that can no longer give the way you want it to.

La Gazzetta dello Sport reported last week that he is rumoured to call it a day on February 1, 2015, the day of the inaugural Cadel Evans Great Ocean Classic, to be held near his Australian home of Barwon Heads, Victoria.

I hope that rumour is unfounded. I really do.

Because at 37, he can still be one of the world's best riders. He should have accepted the reality two years earlier but if the desire is still there another two, three - even four - years, at the top level, dedicating his all to win races he previously used as prep or did not fit in with his Grand Tour race program is not beyond him.

As the retiring Jens Voigt says, who yesterday turned 43 years young and today will attempt - and if you ask me, likely break - the Hour Record, age is just a number.

Tour Down Under. Paris-Nice. Strade Bianche. Flanders and Roubaix. (If Wiggo can do it, so can he.) The Ardennes. Criterium du Dauphiné. Tour de Suisse. Lombardia. And, of course, the Worlds, where five years ago in Mendrisio, he mastered another Australian first.

Yes, fatherhood, watching his adopted son Robel grow into a young man and maybe even a young racer, along with getting a 'real job' awaits.

But as I'm sure you and I will attest, a real job is seriously overrated, and eschewing Grand Tours and racing a select program will allow him more time for family while preparing for life after racing.

So, should Cadel stop?

Hell, no. Don't stop. I say keep going, man!

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