Van den Broeck wants shared leadership with Evans

Belgium's Jurgen Van den Broeck looks forward to a shared leadership role with Silence-Lotto teammate Cadel Evans in next year's Tour de France. He finished 15th on Sunday in his debut Tour, while the Australian placed out of the top ten for the first time, in 30th position.

"Evans has been on the podium before and proved he can be a good leader at the Tour. It would be good for me if he is still around so we can have two guys for the GC," Van den Broeck told Cyclingnews.

Silence-Lotto's Tour de France started badly with a 2:35 loss in the team time trial on day four. Van den Broeck crashed and did not finish with Evans and teammates.

Van den Broeck's time loss that day, 7:04, gave him greater freedom to join escape groups. He was present in four significant escapes over the following 17 days of racing.

"I did not really have a goal in the classification, especially after the team time trial. But by taking time, being in all the breaks, I moved up bit by bit to arrive in 15th," said Van den Broeck.

Race winner Alberto Contador said Saturday that it does not work to have two riders who want to win the Tour within the same team. Van den Broeck believed there were different factors for Silence-Lotto than Astana's Contador and Lance Armstrong.

"Armstrong and Contador are too different, they both wanted to win the Tour. Cadel wanted to win this Tour and I didn't."

Evans never finished outside of the top ten in the Tour de France prior to this year. In the last two years he placed second and wore the leader's yellow jersey for five days.

"I think his condition was good, based on what I saw at all the training camps with him. He was feeling good," Van den Broeck said.

Evans will race the Vuelta a España next, Van den Broeck races Spain's San Sebastián one-day race Saturday and the Eneco Tour, August 18 to 25.