It has been a quiet start to the Tour de France for Cadel Evans, the Australian rider who stumbled at the last, when Carlos Sastre of Spain held him off in the final time-trial last year and took an unexpected overall win.

An Australian has never won the Tour, but Evans, a former mountain biker, is the nation’s best contender yet. A powerful climber and strong time-triallist, he has been runner-up in the past two Tours. Only half a dozen riders are truly capable of winning this year’s race and there is no doubt that he is one of them.

His cause this month appears to be helped by a cooling off of the media frenzy that surrounded him towards the end of last year’s race. By rights, Evans was the heir apparent to the yellow jersey, but he appeared to lose his composure in the closing stages of the Tour, when victory was within his grasp.

The 32-year-old's relations with the media then were not helped by his frosty attitude, which culminated in a bout of head-butting cameras and snarled threats to cut off heads (all in jest, he later claimed). But perhaps it was the decision to hire Serge Borlee, Lance Armstrong’s former bodyguard, that raised media eyebrows the most. The American, it was argued, had only hired Borlee, after winning the Tour — not before.

Following that very public meltdown, this correspondent suggested that his spate of near-misses made him 'cycling’s answer to Greg Norman’, something that was digested Down Under as easily as a Freddie Flintoff hat-trick at the MCG. Certainly, Evans, injuries and team problems notwithstanding, should have won last year, but it is fair to say that he is an intelligent and thoughtful soul, and his intensity has been misunderstood from time to time.

Before the race began his chief obstacle might have been the strength of the all-star Astana team against the relative weakness of his own Silence-Lotto outfit. Now with the Lance Armstrong-Alberto Contador ticket apparently riven with infighting and intrigue, Evans might be one of the handful of riders to benefit from the problems of Astana.

The Australian's time-trial ride in Monaco was solid, rather than exceptional. “I'd rather have had a few seconds advantage on Contador,” he later said. “It's always better to have an advantage on someone like Contador at the Tour.”

Tomorrow’s team time-trial in Montpellier will be crucial to the Australian's cause. A poor performance from Evans and his team and Contador, with Astana expected to dominate the discipline, is likely to move out of reach.

The Spaniard, favourite for the first ski station finish on Friday in Andorra Arcalis, has to be held in check if Evans’ endurance, consistency and patience are to finally bring their reward.

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