ROTTERDAM, Netherlands – Australian Cadel Evans suffered a minor blow in his bid to relaunch his long-time Tour de France victory bid after losing one of his BMC team-mates on Saturday.

Swiss Olympic champion Fabian Cancellara won the 8.9km opening prologue, with most of the big race favorites keeping within touching distance of one another.

Evans finished in 23rd place at 39sec and admitted later that the wet conditions that had hindered many riders starting in the middle of the 198-strong field had prompted him to take his foot off the pedal.

“I certainly took less risks than I would have intended to in the dry,” said the Australian, a two-time runner-up in the race in 2007 and 2008 who finished a disappointing 30th last year.

“But, that’s the way it goes. (There were) varying degrees of a bit slippery for everyone, except for the very first few guys. So it was more or less a fair race, and it looks like the best guy won.”

After admitting he “touched the brakes more times than I normally would have” Evans found out that team-mate Mathias Frank would not be starting again after sustaining a thigh injury.

Frank’s first Tour de France campaign lasted less than 10 minutes, the 23-year-old crashing and picking up a muscle thigh injury and a broken finger, after his wheel slipped on a white traffic band in the road.

“It’s impossible for him to bend his knee,” his team manager John Lelangue told Bicycle.net. “In his state, he won’t be able to start Sunday’s stage.”

As Evans launched his bid to rejoin the yellow jersey contenders, following his disastrous campaign with Silence last year, Lance Armstrong kicked off his final Tour appearance with a flurry.

Having awoke to more damaging doping allegations from former team-mate Floyd Landis, he went on to finish in fourth place at 22sec behind Cancellara, and five ahead of reigning champion Alberto Contador.

It was the first time Armstrong has beaten Contador in a race against the clock since his return from a three-year hiatus in 2009.

“I’ve been wanting to have a decent day in the TT (time trial), and I wasn’t the best out there today but amongst my GC (general classification) rivals, I have to say it’s the best one I’ve done since the comeback,” said Armstrong.

In another damning report on Saturday, Landis leveled more allegations at the American icon, who he has already accused of taking drugs while they were part of the US Postal team, in a Wall Street Journal report.

Armstrong has never tested positive, and once again his team manager Johan Bruyneel — who has also been targeted by Landis — categorically denied the claims.

The Belgian said: “I don’t want to go into the details refuting these claims, otherwise it would take me two hours.

“But for me he (Landis) is someone who has no credibility whatsoever, he’s someone who has changed his own story three or four times in four years.”

Landis won the Tour de France in 2006 but was stripped of his title after testing positive for testosterone.

Despite denying he had ever doped for four years, Landis began making confessions and allegations regarding former team-mates and their systematic doping practices in recent newspaper reports.

Britain’s Bradley Wiggins, meanwhile, was among the big losers on the day, a surprisingly underwhelming performance in the time trial leaving him 56sec off the pace of Cancellara.

After opting to start early, the Londoner, who finished fourth overall in 2009, paid the price by racing in the rain and losing time to the likes of Armstrong and Contador.

Although disappointed, he waved away concerns.

“I said all along the prologue wasn’t the be-all and end-all of this thing for me,” he said. “I’m just pleased to have got round in one piece, felt good and do what I needed to do.

“I couldn’t really push it to the limit on the corners as I couldn’t take the risk of losing three or four minutes from a crash.”

Article: AFP – by: Justin Davis
Photo: CorVos