A Blessing In Disguise

Cadel Evans is one of the best cyclists in the world. The humble 35-year-old husband and father is a former World Champion and the defending champion of the Tour de France. In recent years he has been known for his quiet, calm nature and his laid-back riding style.

But despite the strengths and talents that have made him one of the best in the world, Cadel's years with the Lotto team were unremarkable. Though he managed a second place in the Tour de France – twice, in fact – Cadel received little support from the team, had no say in how the team was run and was generally miserable. A change to the newly-formed BMC team showed instant results. Within two years he had won the Tour de France.

Andy Schleck is in the same position now that Cadel Evans was in a few years ago. The switch from his homemade Leopard Trek to the merged Radioshack-Nissan-Trek has made it glaringly obvious to all that the arrangement isn't going well. The team hasn't even managed to keep the disagreement between Andy and directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel behind closed doors. From the beginning, Bruyneel made his plan to split the Schleck brothers across all the races clear, but it seems the idea hasn't panned out as well in practise. Andy has struggled to finish a race since the beginning of the season, culminating in an abandon of the Critérium du Dauphiné with a broken sacrum. The six-week healing period means that Andy won't recover in time to race the Tour de France, leaving big brother Frank to lead the team alone.

But a broken bone, odd though it may sound, could be just what Andy needs right now, in more than one way. A year away from the Tour and a serious shot at the Vuelta a España may be enough to give Andy some much-needed experience in winning a Grand Tour that he can bring to next year's Tour de France, more mature as a rider. More particularly, though, Andy's form this year has been, to put it very mildly, not good. Like Evans at Lotto, the team tensions have been weighing on the mind of an otherwise good rider, and they've been weighing Andy down. The 27-year-old was embarrassingly dropped on the lower slopes of climbs in the recent Dauphiné, and his time trialling ability hasn't improved any since the Tour in 2010. Andy's physical form is not likely to improve until he's in a better place mentally, and that doesn't seem likely to happen under Bruyneel at Radioshack.

This year's Grand Boucle is definitely not suited to Andy, with fewer high mountains and nearly 100 kilometres of time trials, and both defending champion Cadel Evans and his British challenger Bradley Wiggins are in superlative form, ready to pounce on the slightest hint of weakness from any of their rivals. An appearance at the Tour de France would simply have yielded another weak performance to add to a long list of failed races for the year, doing no good to Andy's teammates, his managers, or himself. Maybe Andy should be thankful for the respite and regard the next few weeks as less of a missed opportunity and more of a blessing in disguise.