Evans credits late coach for surprise win

Many questioned if Evans, twice the Tour runner-up and aged 34, was capable of winning a three-week Grand Tour, but the 2009 world champion proved the doubters wrong.

Evans fought off the challenge of Andy Schleck, who had to settle for a third successive year on the second step of the podium, Frank Schleck, Thomas Voeckler and Alberto Contador, the defending champion.

Evans overturned a 57-second overall deficit on Saturday’s penultimate 42.5-kilometre time-trial to take a lead of one minute 34 seconds over Andy Schleck (Leopard Trek).

Evans said: “I’ve had some bad moments in the last 10 years but that just makes the good moments even better. I can’t quite believe it all now. My thanks go to everyone who played a part - 20 years of work has been put into this performance.

“There has been a lot of great work put in by people behind me - some are still with us and some are not any more.”

Evans won the 2009 World Championships road race in Mendrisio, Switzerland, 6km from the house of mentor Aldo Sassi, who died of cancer late last year.

He said: “He said to me at one point last year ‘I’m sure you can win a Grand Tour and I hope for you it is the Tour de France. If you do you’ll become the most complete rider of your generation’. For him today to see me now would be quite something.”

Evans’s triumph avoided heaping yet more controversy on cycling, for had pre-race favourite Contador won, the result would have been decided by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Prior to the 2011 Tour, Contador had won six straight Grand Tours entered but the Spaniard’s 2010 success - and subsequent results - are in jeopardy as he will be from August 1 subject of a CAS hearing into his positive test for clenbuterol at last year’s Tour. He protests his innocence, attributing the result to contaminated meat.