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Viva la Cadel!

SBS is toasting the success of cyclist Cadel Evans, who won the 2011 Tour de France and has helped the network to land their biggest ratings of the year.

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After three weeks and 3400 kilometres of cycling, Australia’s Cadel Evans rode into the history books, winning the Tour de France -the first Aussie to do so in its 108 years.

Wearing the yellow leader’s jersey for the first time Evans cruised along the Champs-Elysees in an unbeatable position. He has twice taken second place in the annual race.

On the podium before the Arc de Triomphe, Cadel was again awarded the yellow jersey as Tina Arena sang Advance Australia Fair.

Evans’ rise in the Tour de France has been a triumph for SBS, its 21st broadcast of the event.

Saturday night’s broadcast pulled the biggest audience of the year for SBS, at 690,400, beating the 600,000 for Go Back To Where You Came From. SBS ONE even eclipsed ABC1.

It was also the highest ratings ever for a stage of the Tour de France.

To mark his success, SBS ONE has scheduled a special Cadel: Le Triomphe to screen at 10pm tonight.

Looking back at Evans’ momentous 2011 Tour de France campaign, Cadel – Le Triomphe will feature the pivotal moments in Cadel’s race for the yellow jersey. It will start with the team time trial on stage 2 and include Cadel’s stage 4 win over Alberto Contador, his courageous efforts in the Alps and his magnificent individual time trial which saw him take the yellow jersey from Andy Schleck.

Cadel – Le Triomphe will also include footage from the exclusive one-on-one interview with SBS host Mike Tomalaris after Stage 17.

28 Responses

  1. Congratulations to Cadel and all the BMC Team, this was truly a great win. Could someone please tell me, when an artist sings our National Anthem they have to sing it in a way that no one(supporters of Cadels) can sing along with them. There were Aussies trying to sing our “Advance Australia Fair” but the way that Tina was singing it, Impossible. Just sting it as should be sung… please.

    1. Huh? Tina sang it in the same rhythm and melody that we recognise as the anthem. A vocal flourish doesn’t prevent anyone else from singing in plain-song. Given her years of residing there she was a great choice to unite France and Australia.

  2. @Alastair – it would be boring having the same person lead all the way thru. It’s much more exciting to see the lead change several times during the race. I’m sure that the organisers have it at the front of their minds to keep an Australian in the lead when designing each year’s course. Anyway, stage 1 is usually a short individual time-trial called the Prologue. They didn’t run it this year.

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