Cadel Evans wins the second stage of the Criterium International and opens his 2012 winning account
Cadel Evans finds his 2012 form during the second stage of the Criterium International. He finished the race in an impressive time of 7 minutes and 21 seconds to grab his first victory of the new season.
Michael Rogers of Team Sky tried his best but could not overcome his compatriot Australian.
The duo finished the race at almost the same time and Evans was declared as the winner after consulting the recorded version of the race.
Simon Geschke finished one second behind at the third position with Anthony Roux, Maxime Monfort and Marco Pinotti at the fourth, the fifth and the sixth positions.
Cadel was delighted to claim his first win of the 2012 season, “It's taken a while to get going this year, I didn't have the smoothest off season as I'd like to have, but that's OK", he noted.
"Victories are always welcome”, he continued, “Now tomorrow becomes much more interesting for me. I'm thinking of tomorrow and of course holding my place in the classification tomorrow evening".
The 2011 Tour de France winner failed to defend his title at the Tirreno-Adriatico but kept his head high at the three-day race.
His main objective of the 2012 season is the Tour de France and he is building towards the mega event, slowly but surely.
The 35-year-old briefed to media, "I'm always training toward my major objective of the year, and of course the Tour de France is my number one objective of the year”.
Cadel secured a total number of 15 points to earn the top position during the second stage of the race.
Anthony Roux, Tom Dumoulin and Benjamin King were the top three young riders on the day.
Evans is now leading the stage 2 classifications with Michael Rogers, Simon Geschke, Maxime Monfort and Marco Pinotti claiming the next four spots after the second stage.
Simon Geschke, Cadel Evans and Florian Vachon are holding the top three spots after the stage 2 points classifications.
Julien Berard, Grégoire Tarride and David Le Lay occupied the top three positions after the mountain’s classifications.
Evans is now targeting the 179 kilometre final stage of the race to ensure his much awaited first overall victory of the season.
Tags: