Ian Walters Evans

Pumped: Cadel could be our No.1

The question that will inevitably arise from Cadel Evans' magnificent effort across the 21 stages of the Tour de France these past three weeks is this: have we just witnessed Australia's greatest individual sporting performance?

As the Victorian crossed the line in Saturday's time trial, sweat dripping from his chin, face contorted in pain and red BMC uniform glistening in the weak Grenoble sunshine, our minds drifted to that question and the pantheon of all-time greats that Evans indisputably now joins.

In fact, and we offer this up as an argument that's yet to be fully tested in the BPL lab, what Evans has done over the past month eclipses anything we've seen before from an Australian in a sporting arena.

It's an exercise obviously fraught with difficulty - comparing performances from different sports and different eras - but if the criteria is confined to individual feats in truly global sports, then it's hard to go past the dimple-chinned Victorian.

For cycling clearly qualifies as a world-wide pursuit. Not necessarily in a professional sense, just that most people in the world learn to ride a bicycle at some stage and millions of them in cities from Shanghai to Stockholm rely on a bike to get around.

Have a look at the nationalities of the riders competing in this year's Tour. They come from virtually everywhere - from Colombia to Costa Rica, Norway to the Netherlands, Ukraine to the US and Australia to Estonia. (No, there wasn't an Asian team involved, but it is a fledgling professional sport in south-east Asia and pro outfits such as the Marco Polo Cycling Team will soon be making their mark.)

So cycling ticks that particular box, as does running and kicking a soccer ball around. I'd even accept an argument for boxing.

If you win the Olympic 100-metre sprint, you are rightly said to be the fastest man on the planet. If you win the Tour de France, you can rightly lay claim to be the best road cyclist in the world. And Mike Tyson was once widely accepted as being the baddest man on the planet.

The same boast can't be made by the pre-eminent exponents of skiing, surfing, shooting, sailing, cricket, tennis, golf or even swimming, because there are great swathes of the global population who not only don't participate in those sports - but wouldn't have the faintest idea what a sand wedge was used for, or ski stocks, or a batsman's 'protector'.

Don Bradman, Walter Lindrum, Rod Laver, Lauren Jackson, Ian Thorpe, Rod Laver, Layne Beachley, Mick Doohan, Heather McKay, Greg Norman, Luc Longley and many more besides might have racked up peerless performances in their chosen sports but - through no fault of their own - those sports did not have the mass global appeal of cycling. Squash and cricket weren't played much outside England and her realm, there's not much surfing done in mainland Europe and Scandinavia, or swimming in Africa, and when Rod Laver was winning the Grand Slam in 1962 and 1969 tennis hadn't really caught on in Asia, eastern Europe and Russia. Ditto Walter Lindrum: how many families in Africa and Asia had billiard tables in the 1920s?

roy wins scottish players championship

Roy took the final’s first set before Ovens won four of the next five legs to lead 2-1 in the game.

Roy won set four without reply, but an 11-darter saw Ovens lead in the deciding set.

Watford-based Roy levelled with a 101 finish to send the match all the way, and a brilliant 161 checkout earned him victory.

He had also come from behind to win his semi-final against Terry Jenkins, and defeated Vincent van der Voort, Felix McBrearty, Adrian Lewis, Carlos Rodrgiuez and Jason Clark on the day.

Ovens reached his third final of the year with a 3-1 win over Steve Maish in the semi-final, and narrow five-set wins over Wayne Jones, Dave Smith and Mark Dudbridge.

Maish’s semi-final appearance – his second in a month – also lifted his hopes of claiming European Championship qualification spot, as well as his hopes of winning a place in the Ladbrokes.com World Darts Championship in December.

World number three James Wade, two-time World Champion Dennis Priestley and Colin Lloyd were all first round casualties, with the latter going down in a deciding leg to Ayshire’s local star Robert Thornton.

Thornton went on to lose to Andy Jenkins in the last 16, with Northern Ireland’s McBrearty, Liverpool’s Lee Palfreyman and Leeds’ Smith also going down in the fourth round.

Wolverhampton’s Jones squandered a two-set lead in his quarter-final with Ovens, while Maish came from a set down to defeat Andy Jenkins.

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