From my position in the very front row of the theatre, I got the full 4DX experience during the performance of Cadel: Lungs on Legs I saw at the weekend. Watching actor Connor Delves conjure himself into the character of Cadel Evans and recreate the Australian’s long and bumpy ride to victory in the 2011 Tour de France is a very visceral adventure.
I didn’t move out of my seat, but by the end of the hour-long one-man show, I was absolutely knackered. And slightly splattered in water squirted from Delves’ bidons, via his face. I can only imagine how the actor felt. And smelt.
Actually, I don’t have to imagine that second part, because like a proper cycling groupie I waited with other theatre goers to meet Delves and see the bikes afterwards – and, to be fair, considering he’d just done over 27km on rollers, under stage lights, and was sporting a real race-worn Tour de France yellow jersey that is steeped in 15-year-old sweat and can’t be washed, he wasn’t too smelly.
It must be all the clean living. Because, when I interviewed him for Cycling Weekly magazine (see this week’s edition, out on Thursday), Delves told me he had to give up drinking, follow a healthy diet and adhere to a very strict exercise regime to get in shape for the show, which he also wrote, and has been touring around the world for last two years.
The performance takes you right into Evans’s life, from his childhood and time as a mountain biking prodigy, through his journey into road racing, via a stint at the Australian Institute of Sport, where he discovered he has massive lung capacity, much more than 99.9999% of the rest of us. (Hence his nickname, Lungs on Legs.)
Much of the show is set in the tense post-Armstrong era, just after Floyd Landis admitted to doping offences and a shadow was hanging heavy over the sport, but it’s an uplifting story of tenacity and talent overcoming adversity. In a few short scenes, Delves takes you through Evans’ time at Lotto, a period marked by frustration, injury, near-wins, crashes, devastating technicals and toxic team shenanigans, to his 2009 Road Racing World Championship victory and the tragic loss of his coach Aldo Sassi.
The play follows ‘Unlucky Evans’ to the point where he takes a risk and joins the newly formed BMC team in 2010, a year when the rookie squad rode the Tour de France on a wildcard invitation, and the Australian got to wear the yellow jersey for the first time.
At BMC he was teamed with super-experienced domestique George Hincapie, a pairing that turned out to be a complete game changer. The show culminates by taking you through the key moments of the 2011 Tour, the photo finish with Alberto Contador on stage four in Mur-de-Bretagne, the battle to stay in contention with Andy and Frank Schleck on Alpe d’Huez, and the incredible time trial on the penultimate stage, when Cadel finally sealed his win.
It’s a lot. And Delves delivers the whole thing on his own (with the assistance of one excellent stagehand), reenacting various scenes while riding a series of bikes that Evans used during the race. And he properly rides them – the sweat is not a stage stunt (the actor posts his Strava stats after each show).
The live action is augmented by new and archive video footage playing in the background, complete with contemporaneous commentary from Phil Liggett, who collaborated in the making of show, as did Evans himself, and BMC. (The bikes and other gear from the 2011 Tour – some of which is on display in the foyer – has all been loaned to Delves by BMC and Evans.)
Delves was 15 years old when Evans won the Tour, living in his parent’s bike shop in Perth, Western Australia. “Cadel changed my life as a kid,” he told me. “He was this shining light for Australia.”
I too was living in Australia in 2011, and I spent three exhausting weeks in July of that year watching the Tour unfold in the middle of the night on SBS. As you can probably imagine, it was a fair-dinkum crikey big deal for everyone in the country at the time, so this whole play is a goosebump-inducing ride along memory lane for me.
But even if you can barely remember Evans, if you’re passionate about cycling and the Tour de France, watching this play is an extraordinarily absorbing way to spend an unforgettable hour. Just be aware that, if you sit on the front row, the absorbingness of the experience will likely be literal as well as metaphorical.
Cadel: Lungs on Legs is playing at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London, until 15 November. Read the Q&A with Delves in this week's Cycling Weekly.