Tour de France Stage 16: In the 24 years since Phil Anderson did battle with Bernard Hinault in the Pyrenees, the Australians have acquired a reputation for their fighting spirit in the Tour and yesterday - after a day of tragedy for Antipodean cycling - an Australian in his first Tour, Cadel Evans, found the perfect response in the race's final mountain stage.
At the start in Mourenx, Evans spoke of his horror at the accident in Germany in which one of the best Australian woman cyclists, Amy Gillett, was killed by a motorist and five of her team-mates were injured.
"I don't think words can do anything," said the 28-year-old. "How many (cyclists) have to get killed before people realise how dangerous motor vehicles are?"
Yesterday, he led the race over its final super-category mountain pass, the Col d'Aubisque, and finished fourth behind the stage winner, Oscar Pereiro of Spain. More significantly, he came in three minutes 24 seconds ahead of the field.
As a result, Evans moved into seventh overall, and he is on course to become the highest Australian finisher in the Tour since Anderson came in fifth 20 years ago.
Most of the Australians who have made an impact since Anderson are sprinters such as Robbie McEwen - who took the cliché of the battling Aussie rather too literally at Tours this year when he clashed with a compatriot, Stuart O'Grady.
Evans was the favourite to win the mountain bike race at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, but he flopped and turned to road racing, establishing a reputation as a stage-race rider. He led the Tour of Italy for a day in his first attempt at a major tour, in 2002, but since then he has been cursed by an inability to keep upright.
Indirectly, his fine riding in this Tour is a slap in the face for Jan Ullrich's T-Mobile team, which hired Evans to serve as a second foil to the German. But he fell off three times just before major tours and broke the same collarbone, his left.
Last year, although he was in good form, T-Mobile left him out of the Tour, worried that he would not make it through the first week without incident. That now seems like a mistake.
Even so, Evans, who currently rides with McEwen at Davitamon-Lotto, barely made it to this Tour after breaking the bone for the fourth time, training on Col d'Aubisque, where he seemed to be taking particular care on the descent yesterday. The bones have not knitted so he is riding well for a man whose shoulder is held together with gaffer tape.
Pereiro, winner of the sprint here, was another with a point to prove. He has been an indefatigable attacker since the Tour started, and wears the red race number awarded to the rider deemed "most combative".
Like Evans, he has a background in racing off-road, primarily in exhibition riding, although his high-speed excursion on to the grass on the descent from the Col de la Madeleine in the Alps was apparently not a stunt.
He had been frustrated with his second place to George Hincapie on Sunday at Pla d'Adet, and his team, Phonak, sponsored by a Swiss hearing-aid maker, has had little to shout about recently, having spent the last 11 months getting over positive tests for blood doping involving its leaders Tyler Hamilton and Santiago Perez.
Both have been sacked and the team is under new management after initially being refused entry into the Union Cycliste International's ProTour series, so this victory was more than welcome.
It is about 30 miles from Mourenx to Pau as the crow flies, but cruelly the Tour organisers had added a vast loop south into the western Pyrenees, extending the distance to 112 miles.
Yesterday's first pass, the Col de Marie-Blanque, is rarely crossed by the Tour, but is a steep, unremitting test, while the Col d'Aubisque is legendary as the first great climb to figure in the Tour, in 1910.
After the demonstrations in the Alps against the re-introduction of wolves, yesterday there was a protest against the importation of Slovenian bears to strengthen the local stock. On many of the road signs bear paw-prints had been painted, while at the foot of the Aubisque the posters read: "To arms, get your guns", and a teddy bear had been suspended from a telephone wire.
Some of the spectators remain in grizzly mood as well, and on the Marie-Blanque the Kazakh Andrei Kashechkin was punched in the face by a fan. The reasons remain unclear - on television, it looked like an accident - but nonetheless the confrontations with Basque fans on Sunday are a reminder of the vulnerability of the Tour caravan and the riders.
Vultures circled above the green mountain peaks around the rock amphitheatre of the Aubisque, known locally as the "circus of death".
Guardian Service
Mourenx - Pau, 180.5 km
1 Oscar Pereiro Sio (Spa) Phonak Hearing Systems 4hrs 38mins 40secs, 2 Xabier Zandio (Spa) Illes Balears-Caisse d'Epargne, 3 Eddy Mazzoleni (Ita) Lampre-Caffita, 4 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto all at same time, 5 Philippe Gilbert (Bel) Francaise Des Jeux at 2.25, 6 Anthony Geslin (Fra) Bouygues Telecom, 7 Jorg Ludewig (Ger) Domina Vacanze, 8 Juan Antonio Flecha (Spa) Fassa Bortolo, 9 Ludovic Turpin (Fra) Ag2r-Prevoyance, 10 Cedric Vasseur (Fra) Cofidis, Le Credit Par Telephone all at same time.
OVERALL: 1 Lance Armstrong (USA) Discovery Channel at 66hrs 52mins 03secs, 2 Ivan Basso (Ita) Team CSC at 2mins 46secs, 3 Michael Rasmussen (Den) Rabobank at 3.09, 4 Jan Ullrich (Ger) T-Mobile Team at 5.58, 5 Francisco Mancebo (Spa) Illes Balears-Caisse d'Epargne at 6.31, 6 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Gerolsteiner at 7.35, 7 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto at 9.29, 8 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak Hearing Systems at 9.33, 9 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) T-Mobile Team at 9.38, 10 Christophe Moreau (Fra) Credit Agricole at 11.47.
POINTS: 1. Thor Hushovd (Norway/Credit Agricole) 164, 2 Stuart O'Grady (Australia/Cofidis) 150, 3 Robbie McEwen (Australia/Davitamon - Lotto) 142, 4 Alexandre Vinokourov (Kazakhstan/ T-Mobile) 90, 5 Robert Foerster (Germany/Gerolsteiner) 84.
MOUNTAIN: 1 Michael Rasmussen (Denmark/ Rabobank) 185, 2 Oscar Pereiro (Spain/Phonak) 135, 3 Lance Armstrong (US/Discovery Channel) 92, 4 Michael Boogerd (Netherlands/Rabobank) 90, 5 Christophe Moreau (France/Credit Agricole) 89.
TEAM: 1 T-Mobile 198:30:13; 2 Discovery Channel +19:28; 3 Team CSC +21:58; 4 Credit Agricole +28:11; 5 Illes Balears +28:45.
