Cadel Evans 4 Wheel Connection

Well I am sure you have heard that Cadel Evans won the Tour de France and what a well deserved win it was. What you may not know is that his win has closer links to John Bowe Driving than you may have thought.

A few years ago Cadel attended our Drive to Arrive defensive driving course with his wife Chiara, both driving his Holden SS ute. Cadel then came on our High Performance course at Sandown in a Lotus Exige arranged via a local Lotus dealer. This was at the start of 2007, the year after he had finished his 2nd Tour de France in 4th place – who could imagine how far he would go from there!

I was lucky enough to be his instructor on the High Performance course and during the day he conducted a photo shoot for magazines and a tv interview for SBS's Cycling Central. During this interview I was asked to comment on his performance behind the wheel and one of the main things I mentioned was his desire to compete combined with his understanding of approaching sport in a professional manner which allowed him to focus on improving a number of small techniques which would gain large overall improvements. With my help he improved by 10 seconds during the day, a per day time improvement that he would have liked to have achieved during his next Tour de France race as he came 2nd by only 23 seconds.

Even though Cadel had a couple of spins during his time on track with us he was still very appreciative of the fun he had and the things he learnt. After the event Cadel gave me a signed team jersey which still hangs in my wardrobe (it is too small for me to wear, those guys have no body fat). It was noted by the Tour de France commentators that he descends better than most of the other riders and we believe that we helped improve his cornering technique when he was on our course.

I kept in touch with Cadel over the years and recall in 2009 when news broke that he had changed to the BMC Cycling Team. I sent him a text message after I heard the news and he called me back to have a chat about it. He sounded very confident that he would have the right people around him to finally achieve his goal of winning the worlds biggest cycling race after 2 years of close calls (2007 @ 23sec, 2008 @ 58sec). Unfortunately we had to wait another 2 years for the win to come but having seen the dedication he gives to his sport we are very pleased for him.

I was also lucky enough to have a ride with Cadel not long after I started cycling. It was only my 3rd ride and we met at St Kilda and rode along Beach Rd to Patterson Lakes. As I was new to cycling I had no idea what I was doing, I just thought I had better try to keep up. Well I kept up even though I couldn't breath and my legs couldn't push anymore but I felt pretty good about my efforts. I later realized that Cadel was riding very conservatively as we averaged about 30km/h for our 60k journey. I later noted that he completes the Tour de France journey of over 3,500k's at an average of over 41km/h. It now made sense why other riders were overtaking us and asking Cadel to hurry up! During this ride I got a puncture and unlike the pro teams who have a support car with spare wheels ready to bolt on I had to change it myself, or so I thought. After I started to attempt to lever the tyre off the rim a pair of hands grabbed the wheel and a voice said I'll do that for you, Cadel was getting dirty changing my tyre for me – he is a genuine good guy.

Earlier on I mentioned the interview with SBS Cycling Central. One other thing that I also mentioned during that interview was that Cadel would have an easier time of becoming a racing driver compared to me become a professional cyclist. Now that I have been riding for a few years and just got back from riding in France along some of the famous tour stages that he races on I can honestly say that he will definitely be the one who transitions to my sport easier than me transitioning to his, those guys know how to suffer and they do it for 1,000's of kilometers over 3 weeks, not just a few comfortable laps in a car around a race track.

Dean Sammut

Instructor, Office Manager
John Bowe Driving