Tour de France 2011: Carnage pits Cadel Evans in pole position

There has been unprecedented carnage among the favourites, who now total three, or perhaps two and a half depending on the state of Alberto Contador's wounded knee. If he is indeed pedalling on one leg, an apt image for a race that has lost so many stars and includes so many pedalling wounded, it will mean the outcome of the 2011 Tour depends on how Andy Schleck and Cadel Evans react in the coming days. Both Schleck and Evans have one thing in common which explains why they are unscathed while Bradley Wiggins, Jürgen van den Broeck, Alexandr Vinokourov and Robert Gesink are at home or, in Gesink's case, might as well be. Their respective teams, Leopard-Trek and BMC, include the best "bodyguards" in the business. The French term refers to cyclists who have the speed and experience to keep their leaders at the head of the bunch at critical moments: Fabian Cancellara for Schleck, the veteran George Hincapie for BMC. Contador for one has no comparable team-mate to protect him. Additionally, Evans has gained in confidence this year, said his BMC manager, Jim Ochowicz. "We saw a difference in his ability to handle the stress of the race last year. And he has improved on that again this year." The 34-year-old Australian has enjoyed the best opening week and will be in pole position when the Tour heads south tomorrow. He grabbed three seconds on Schleck at Mont des Alouettes on day one and eight more at Mûr-de-Bretagne, where he got the psychological boost of a stage win under his belt. On Saturday, when the race needed to be controlled running into the Massif Central, it was his BMC team who took over the job. He has 11sec on Schleck, and more importantly, 1min 41sec on Contador. Both Evans and his young directeur sportif , John Lelangue, have a point to prove. Evans had disastrous Tours in 2009 and 2010, having come close in both the previous years. In the 2009 race he simply rode like a lost soul, while last year he was wearing the yellow jersey when he crashed and broke his elbow, reducing his overall challenge to a battle for survival. As for Lelangue, his last true chance of winning the Tour was in 2006, when he guided Floyd Landis to a victory which proved ephemeral: the American tested positive for testosterone a few days afterwards. "Since October, Cadel and I have spoken more with each other than with our wives," Lelangue told the Guardian. "We've been only thinking about the Tour, certainly since the presentation of the route in October, maybe since last July." The critical difference in Evans this year, believes his manager, is that he has raced less and trained more. But in his few outings he has taken victory in two major stage races, Tirreno-Adriatico and the Tour of Romandie, and finished second to Wiggins in the Critérium du Dauphiné. "The important thing was to get Cadel to the start fresh, so his programme has been totally to week-long stage races. The idea is that when you ride those you aren't travelling as much as if you do one-day events, you get all kinds of tests – time trials, mountains, flat. And it left us with good gaps for altitude training and reconnoitering the route." The team time trial was another focus, including sessions at the Zolder motor circuit, and one on closed roads in Belgium with a police escort. Even before Contador's knee problem emerged, Lelangue was confident that the Spaniard would not win the Tour. "Our race was never based on Contador, I don't think he will be on the podium. Even if he didn't go too far into his reserves at the Giro d'Italia, he has had a difficult three months. He raced the Giro, then had to cram in looking at the Tour route, training for the team time trial, riding his national championships, all into three weeks. He's been here, there and everywhere. That's not the best preparation in my book." Increasingly, the 2011 race is looking like that of 1996. That race was a "Tour of transition" with a Spanish star (Miguel Indurain) who proved to be past his sell-by date, and a hectic opening week with numerous crashes, unusually high stress levels, and an unexpectedly high level of fatigue among the riders. There was no long time trial or team time trial to give structure to the race, like this year. That Tour did not take shape until the race hit the Col de la Madeleine on the opening stage in the Alps, when there was a massive sort-out. Something similar should happen on Thursday when the Tour enters the Pyrenees. On the Madeleine in 1996, everything that had seemed clear in the previous stages was rendered completely irrelevant in the space of a few kilometres. Something similar may happen in 48 hours on the Col du Hourquette d'Ancizan or the Col du Tourmalet. That is the eternal attraction of the world's greatest bike race.