Cadel Evans gets custom painted BMC for his last ever pro race

For the Tour Down Under, Cadel Evans was gifted a custom painted BMC TeamMachine SLR01, with some very special design features to commemorate his long and successful career. For the race that will mark the final time he’ll pin a number to his jersey, the Great Ocean Road Race that bears his name, BMC have again been busy in the paint shop, having prepared another custom race bike.

For this race, BMC have painted the frame in a blue colour scheme, a colour borrowed from the Great Ocean Road Race, a new event on the calendar. It's a one day race, the men’s elite race is on Sunday 1 February, with the women’s elite road race the following day.

Aside from the blue paint, the frame and fork feature the same iconography as featured on the specially prepared bike that Cadel raced in the Tour Down Under recently. There’s the rainbow stripes and Tour de France yellow jersey commemorated on the seat tube, plus aboriginal tribal designs, the comic character Tintin, and various symbols that represent his professional cycling career and his personality elsewhere on the frame.

The bike is identical to the one Cadel raced in the Tour Down Under, and throughout last year as well - BMC introduced this latest TeamMachine SLR01 in 2013 so the team have had two seasons on it already now. At a claimed 790g the frame is certainly right up there with the lightest frames in the peloton, and as we found when we reviewed it, offers a very high level of stiffness with a surprising amount of smoothness too, thanks to a number of changes from the previous TeamMachine. 

The custom painted bike marks Cadel Evans’ official transition to the role of BMC Switzerland Ambassador.

“I’ve had my time in professional sport; I gave absolutely everything I could to the sport on the competitive side,” says Cadel. “I’ve gotten everything out of myself and that’s the way I wanted to finish my career; without any regrets. I’ve wrung my competitive spirit pretty dry! Now I’m looking forward to continuing to work with BMC Switzerland - it’s all coming together really nicely.”

"We know that the Great Ocean Race is something that Cadel has worked hard on" says BMC Racing Team sponsor Andy Rihs “So we thought that a gift in the form of a bike, in the colours of his race, would lift his spirits as he transitions from professional cyclist to the next phase of his life.”