Seems like Evans is blaming Sky then

Rodrego Hernandez

Evans is known as a clean rider and has no suspicion around him. If he is riding clean then surely it is safe to assume that he is on his limit in the high mountains and unable to attack riders whose reputation might be a little dodgy. The fact that he is able to keep up with them is pretty remarkable but don't expect any Contador type attacks.

It always amuses me that fans want rid of doping but always criticise clean riders for not being as exciting to watch as others. You can't have it both ways.

iainf72

Rodrego Hernandez wrote:

Evans is known as a clean rider and has no suspicion around him. If he is riding clean then surely it is safe to assume that he is on his limit in the high mountains and unable to attack riders whose reputation might be a little dodgy. The fact that he is able to keep up with them is pretty remarkable but don't expect any Contador type attacks.

It always amuses me that fans want rid of doping but always criticise clean riders for not being as exciting to watch as others. You can't have it both ways.

^^^^
this.

Nicely put.

Tom Butcher

Nonsense - in the past there were times when he overdid avoiding going to the front at all - I'm not talking about situations where he was on the limit.

Anyway dopers can be on the limit too - even if he was clean and the rest doped he still had the fitness to beat many of them but for a while he lacked the attacking instinct and the will to take chances to win a race.

I'm happy to accept he's adopted a more attacking style these days but his reputation was well deserved.

celbianchi

iainf72 wrote:

Rodrego Hernandez wrote:

Evans is known as a clean rider and has no suspicion around him. If he is riding clean then surely it is safe to assume that he is on his limit in the high mountains and unable to attack riders whose reputation might be a little dodgy. The fact that he is able to keep up with them is pretty remarkable but don't expect any Contador type attacks.

It always amuses me that fans want rid of doping but always criticise clean riders for not being as exciting to watch as others. You can't have it both ways.

^^^^
this.

Nicely put.

Agreed, I have always liked Evans and found the wheel sucking jibes odd. I reckon all those who accuse him of it, when riding on the absolute limit in the mountains MUST find it easy to just attack the elite group, some of whom are better climbers anyhow.
Give the man a break, I can imagine in the Worlds when he clipped off they were all desperatley hoping he'd get reeled back in.

Tom Butcher

He wasn't always on the absolute limit - there were times when he was in a group chasing someone who had attacked and seemed absolutely unwilling to do any of the chasing - yet when someone got fed up and tried to jump on their own he was first on their wheel.

I realise he has a number of fans - I've nothing against him myself - but I don't think a load of cycling fans woke up one day and decided to label him a wheelsucker for no reason whatsoever.

Rodrego Hernandez

Some people who don't know enough about the sport and racing in particular think that it is easy. Sit in the front group and just attack on the hill. Someone attacks, just jump with them, easy.

He may have missed the odd turn but then hasn't everyone - how many turns did Lance do? Not many.

If you are stuffed, you can't chase every break and you can't always take a turn but you might have enough left to attack once or follow a wheel once.

As a viewer you only see a small bit of the racing and can't possibly ever know how the rider feels to know he wasn't on his limit.

deejay

Rodrego Hernandez wrote:

He may have missed the odd turn but then hasn't everyone - how many turns did Lance do? Not many.

Probably that is why he gets little respect either.