"I saw that he almost has a limp on the bike earlier in Tour and it looked like he was struggling a bit but it's hard to read. If you hit ground it can really take it out of you in a three week race. He might be struggling or he might be best rider in the race, you don't know," Evans said during his rest day press conference.
"Knee injuries are complicated. You can have little things and not be able to pedal your bike. You can adapt to shoulder injuries but not knee. You'd have to ask Alberto how bad it is. He's still a big threat."
Evans currently sits third overall in the race but importantly ahead of all his major GC rivals. Having ridden aggressively but successfully – he has one stage to his name already – he heads into the Pyrenees in a strong position.
"I've been saying every day that the team have delivered me into a great position."
The team had been criticised both from within the peloton and the press room for doing too much work in the opening week, with the likes of Leopard Trek and Saxo Bank keen to take a back seat and do as little work on the front of the peloton as possible. However, Evans disagreed with the evaluation of his team.
"No, no, [the team's not doing too much]. We're really well positioned now. It would have been too much [to have the jersey] and to control the race yesterday and it was clearly really hard for Garmin yesterday. Still, compliments to Hushovd for keeping it at Super Besse because that's not an easy finish."
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"We controlled the race to a certain amount, but we mainly just wanted to stay at front and be safe there because it's really unpredictable."
Daniel Benson was the Editor in Chief at Cyclingnews.com between 2008 and 2022. Based in the UK, he joined the Cyclingnews team in 2008 as the site's first UK-based Managing Editor. In that time, he reported on over a dozen editions of the Tour de France, several World Championships, the Tour Down Under, Spring Classics, and the London 2012 Olympic Games. With the help of the excellent editorial team, he ran the coverage on Cyclingnews and has interviewed leading figures in the sport including UCI Presidents and Tour de France winners.
