THERE were few who thought Carlos Sastre could do it, not over 53km. The Spaniard’s CSC team were confident but almost everyone else thought Cadel Evans, the Australian, would make up the 95 seconds he needed in yesterday’s time trial to win the Tour de France.

Instead, the 32-year-old from Madrid will ride into Paris today as Tour champion-elect. It was a just reward for the attacking rider given the cautious pragmatism of Evans, whose Tour strategy was to reach the 20th stage from Cerilly to Saint-Amand-Montrond within touching distance of the Yellow Jersey and overhaul the deficit in the individual race against the clock.

Evans has looked at times as if the sheer enormity of the opportunity in front of him was weighing on his shoulders. This was his greatest, and perhaps last, chance to win the Tour. Yesterday he wilted under the pressure he had put on himself, proving that, sometimes, being the overwhelming favourite is a handicap.

The turning point of the race for Sastre was Wednesday’s stage to Alpe d’Huez when he made the defining attack of the Tour. He broke clear at the base of the Alpine climb and gained 2min 15sec from Evans. CSC came under fire for their tactics that day, with some claiming the time Sastre gained would never be enough to withstand the Evans onslaught. Sastre’s attack would have impressed his late brother-in-law, the Spanish climber Jose Maria Jimenez, who earned the nickname El Chaba, ‘the wild one’, because of his aggressive style in the mountains. Jimenez died of a heart-attack in a Madrid clinic in 2002 when he was being treated for depression, something Sastre, the quiet man of the peloton, never talks about.

In the end, it wasn’t even close. Evans, usually so strong in a time trial, never got going.

By the halfway mark it was clear Sastre would need to come to a grinding halt if the Tour was to have its first Australian winner. Sastre never slowed enough to give Evans - whose mother Helen flew in from Australia to surprise her son - a chance.

The gap in the end was unequivocal, 1min 5sec, with Stefan Schumacher, the German rider, winning the stage.

Barring an accident today, this will be by far the biggest win of Sastre’s career. His stage win at Alpe d’Huez and a Tour stage win in the Pyrenees five years ago were the previous high spots. He will also eclipse his Tour finish in 2006 when he was lifted from fourth to third place after the ‘winner’ Floyd Landis was stripped of his title for doping.

Tour standings

OVERALL
1 C Sastre (Spa) CSC Saxo Bank 84hrs 1min 0sec 2 C Evans (Aus) Silence-Lotto, 1min 5sec behind 3 B Kohl (Aut) Gerolsteiner, 1:20 4 D Menchov (Rus) Rabobank, 2:00 5 C Vande Velde (US) Garmin Chipotle, 3:12

KING OF THE MOUNTAINS
1 B Kohl (Aut) Gerolsteiner, 125pts 2 C Sastre (Spa) CSC Saxo Bank, 80 3 F Schleck (Hol) CSC Saxo Bank, 80 4 T Voeckler (Fra) Bouygues Telecom, 65 5 S Schumacher (Ger) Gerolsteiner, 61

POINTS
1 O Freire (Spa) Rabobank, 244pts 2 E Zabel (Ger) Team Milram, 202 3 T Hushovd (Nor) Credit Agricole, 198 4 L Duque (Rom) Cofidis, 164 5 K Kirchen (Hol) Team Columbia, 145

- Lionel Birnie is a journalist with Cycling Weekly